


FANATIC

by EnoughLightHome



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, All The Boys Hate Each Other sort of, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Basically when i wrote this, Break Up, Burnout - Freeform, Depression, F/M, First half of this fic is just angst and band break-up and romance, Fist Fights, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kidnapping, Larry Stylinson Is Real, Love at First Sight, M/M, New York City, Pining, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, So this is an imagining of what their career might have been like 6 years later, Strangers to Lovers, Survival, The boys play instruments, Torture, fractured Band Dynamics, no beta we die like men, second half is literally torture by fangirls, the only thing they had out was What Makes You Beautiful, written in 2011
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 62,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29817738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnoughLightHome/pseuds/EnoughLightHome
Summary: (WRITTEN IN 2011)When One Direction was put together on the X-Factor, they were five lads who became fast friends and had the whole world at their feet. Seven years later, their career has exploded beyond any of their wildest dreams, but they couldn't be more unhappy: Liam never gets to see his girlfriend, Zayn's depression makes him violent, Louis drinks himself half to death, Harry is unrequitedly in love with his best friend, and Niall just wants it all to stop.One summer day when it becomes all too much, Niall runs away from their Today Show performance and meets Hayley, a grad student and Directioner who has a big heart that cares about him, and Niall might fall a little bit in love. So in love that he finally has the courage to tell the boys that he's done with the band.But his relief is short-lived, and just a couple days after things start looking better for Niall, he and the other boys are kidnapped by jilted fangirls. At first, the girls just want to keep them locked up so they miss their first show of the new tour. But after they learn of the impending break-up, they decide to teach the boys a lesson, and maybe even change their minds.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne/Danielle Peazer, Niall Horan/Original Female Character(s)





	1. Still Awake at 3am

**Author's Note:**

> Again, this was written in October of 2011. Kinda crazy how things turned out since (some stuff I guessed in the story ended up being accurate in real life later, like Niall getting braces!!). But I figured it was time to share, so here you go. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> "I keep  
> Crawling back to  
> You on  
> Hands and knees:  
> You are everything that I've hoped for,  
> And more than I'll ever need.
> 
> So I'm Sorry  
> If this sounds  
> kind of  
> overdramatic,  
> But I'm you're number one fan-  
> You can call me fanatic."

It was 3 AM, and despite the warm darkness of the quiet hotel room, Niall Horan was still awake. 

This was unsurprising: Niall was always awake these days. His mind was constantly racing, stimulated by anxiety. When his anxiousness hit an apex, like now, lying in bed bored him. He wanted to jump up and down, making crazy noises and laughing so hard his face would go as red as the signature outfits management was always instructing the wardrobe team to dress him in. 

But no. Instead, he was forced to stay prostrate for eight hours while the rest of his band and crew recharged. Prostrate was a word, right?

The sound of his band mate, Liam Payne, rolling over in the blankets didn't startle him. He was used to it; Liam was a wild sleeper, and they had shared hotel rooms practically since the band had been put together. Niall was always awake, so he knew just how much Liam moved around at night. 

Liam eventually settled into a position he liked, and Niall envied him for a brief moment before resuming his fantasizing. In his fantasy, he was at University, studying to be a doctor; his hair was naturally blonde, he walked through the halls chatting up some girl from his First Aid class, and when she laughed, he smiled with perfectly straight teeth. He unconsciously flicked his tongue up and ran it over the braces he’d been wearing for what felt like forever. 

He didn't know which he hated more: the obtrusive metal or his crooked bicuspids. 

In Niall's peripheral vision, the connecting door between their room and the next one slowly drifted open, and the fantasy dissolved. He sat straight up and looked over the end of the bed, where another of his bandmates, Louis Tomlinson, was crouching his way into their room, dragging a clunky silhouette behind him. He didn't make any sound, though he was clearly struggling with his load.   


“Louis,” Niall hissed in his direction, “what are you doing?”

Louis seemed to have not heard him, creeping further into the room.    


“Lou!” Niall hissed a bit more loudly. “I can see you. I know you can hear me.”

Louis didn't stop to answer, “Shush!”   


“What did you say?”

Louis swore on an exhale.   


“What are you doing?” Niall repeated.    


Finally, Louis stopped moving long enough to sigh exasperatedly. “I'm wondering why no one's ever kicked your nosy little arse.”   


Louis could be a bit… okay, Louis was a  _ complete dick _ sometimes, but Niall still worshiped the ground he walked on. He was confident, charismatic in his own way, and could always make people laugh. Niall was the awkward guy that fans only liked because they felt sorry for him. It wasn't hard to guess that he would have done anything to be Louis.

Niall laughed at Louis 's mean-spirited comment, a gut reaction for trying to win him over. Louis was not impressed.   


“Shut up, you twat!” he whispered. “You'll wake him!”

Niall turned his head to Liam, who was fast asleep, his peaceful expression lit by the playful bit of moonlight leaking in through the windows. Everything suddenly clicked and he swung his head back to the shadow in Louis's hands.    


“Is that a bucket of water?!”   


“It could be,” Louis reported slyly, inspecting it. The same moonlight that made Liam look innocent made Louis look devious. “I found it under the sink in our bathroom.”

“You’re not going to dump it on Li…?”   


“Sh!”

Niall would not be shushed. He didn't want to seem like a goody two-shoes to Louis, but Liam was his closest friend in the band, and he didn't want the guilt of not trying to stop Louis. 

“But it's his anniversary today, and he's already upset about not being with Danielle because she's dancing on tour in Australia. Why would you make it worse?”   


“If you don't speak more quietly-”

“You should go dump it on Harry! That'd be a laugh!”   


Louis smirked wryly and just rolled his eyes. Like Louis would ever do something like this to his Harry. Louis's bromance with band heartthrob Harry Styles was notorious- so notorious that they had a secret romance conspiracy and even the ship name Larry Stylinson. The only times Louis played pranks on Harry was if the entire rest of the band was involved, and even then, Louis always went easiest on him. Liam and Niall got pranked more than anyone else, and Niall doubly so because he put himself in the line of fire so often, a habit he picked up in the early days of the band in hopes that Louis would like him. 

“What about Zayn?” Niall suggested desperately, his nervous eyes following Louis's progression to Liam's bed.    


“Zayn locked  _ his _ door.”   


“So pick the lock!”   


“ _Shut up!_ ”   


“Niall?”

Louis dove behind Niall's bed at the sound of Liam's groggy voice. There was a lot of rustling and Niall had the sense to grab his phone from the end table just as Liam turned on the light. 

“Vas happenin?” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.   


Niall held the phone away from his ear. “Sorry, Li. It's just me mum.”

Liam sighed and slumped back into the pillows. “You can never whisper, can you?”   


“Sorry. Hey, Mum? I gotta go, I woke Liam up.” It was lucky Liam was still half asleep; Niall was a horrific liar, but Liam wasn't awake enough to notice.

“You don't have to, it's alright,” Liam assured him. “Just try not to shout anymore. Hi, Moira.”   


“Liam says hi,” Niall pretended to say into the mouthpiece. He waited before telling Liam, “She says hi back.”   


Liam smiled, pulled the blanket up to his chin, and made to roll over, but froze mid motion and sat bolt upright. The adjoining door was still open, and the bucket of water sat alone in the middle of the floor.    


“Louis!” Liam shouted angrily. “Get out!”   


Louis jumped up and slapped Niall in the back of the head. “Good going, idiot. I told you to stay quiet!”

“Niall, hang up the phone, your mum's not even awake yet!” Liam snapped.   


Niall didn't bother reminding him of the time zone differences, and how his mother was more likely awake than asleep. He obediently put the phone back on the table.

“Louis, why can you never just behave?” Liam scolded, ever the responsible one.

“Oh, behave, behave,  _ god! _ ” Louis flopped backwards onto Niall's bed. “Li, you're like the dullest record ever, stuck on repeat!” 

“You can't just go around in the middle of the night pouring water on people who are trying to sleep! I'm tired, Louis!”   


“We're all tired, aren't we? We've all had the same day! What's a bit of fun to balance it out?”   


“How is being woken up by a cold bath in bed fun?!”   


Unfortunately for Niall, his sense of humor chose that moment to notice the comical differences in Liam and Louis's voices, and how Louis's high, spikey voice and Liam's smooth, low voice fit their personalities exactly. He laughed. Liam rounded on him.   


“Is this funny, Niall?”   


Niall hated when Liam used his serious tone on him because he sounded just like Niall's father. It made Niall feel like he was a child again. He swung his gaze between Liam and Louis. “I wasn't... I mean... no, it's... it's not.”

“Oh, don't lie!” Louis rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up into a standing position. “It would’ve been a brilliant gag and everyone knows it!”

“Brilliant!” Liam was clearly vexed. “Why don't I come round to  _ your  _ room tomorrow night and soak  _ you _ in bed!”

“There's always _so much_ noise!” Harry’s faint shout mock-sobbed in exasperation from the next room. “Why am I awake?”    


“Oh, Harold, darling!” Louis sang in a strange accent. He disappeared through the door and reappeared supporting a dead-looking Harry on one arm. 

“Lou,” Harry moaned in protest, slumping onto Louis's shoulder. 

Louis would not be deterred. “Tell me, Harry: if I dumped a bucket of water on Liam whilst he was sleeping, wouldn't it be funny?”

“If I say yes, will the shouting stop?”   


“No!” Liam snapped.   


“I'm going back to bed.” He shuffled back to the door.

“Haz, get in here, this is a serious question!” Louis said.

Harry whirled around, his eyes suddenly wide open and annoyed. “Why are we discussing this? It's three in the morning! We should be sleeping!”   


“It's Louis who can't bloody stay asleep for longer than ten minutes before he has to wreck someone's day!” Liam hollered at Louis.

“Louis didn't wake me up!” Harry spat. “You idiots did!”   


“ I haven't said anything,” Niall defended himself.   


“Niall, shut the hell up!” Harry exploded.   


“Well, you can’t blame me for something I haven't done!”   


“Don't you yell at him for this!” Liam defended Niall. Niall appreciated the gesture, but he had just been defending himself, and Liam was acting like he hadn't said anything. “If you're going to yell at anyone, yell at Louis!”   


“I can stand up for myself!” Niall asserted.   


“I'm not yelling at Louis because Louis isn't the one yelling at  _ me _ ! You are!” Harry went on as though Niall hadn't spoken.   


“I'm yelling at  _ you _ because you're yelling at  _ me _ !”   


“ _ You _ started the yelling!”   


“Is  _ anyone _ listening to me?” Niall demanded.   


“It doesn't matter who started it! Goddamn it, Harry, just get Louis out of our room!”   


“How ‘bout I shove him up your arse!”   


“ _Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhh screaming ahhhhh!_ ” Louis interjected unhelpfully.   


“Louis, SHUT UP!”   


“Don't tell _ him _ what to do either! You think you're Stalin or something, Liam!”   


“ _Looooooud! Screaming! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!_ ”   


“ _**WHAT THE FUCK**?! _ ” A thunderous voice boomed with fury.

The rest of the band went silent.

“Shit,” Harry muttered what was on all their minds.   


The adjoining door on the other side of Harry and Louis's room burst open, slamming against the wall with a crack, and through it stormed the final member of One Direction, Zayn Malik, like a snarling typhoon. He stood in Liam and Niall's doorway, swelling to fill the space. Niall winced in anticipation.   


“ **_WHO IS SHOUTING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?_ ** ” he barked. “ _**I'M TRYING TO SLEEP. REGULAR PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FUCKING SLEEP**!!! _ ”

It wasn't often really that Zayn  _ wasn't _ trying to sleep lately, but nobody brought that up. Everyone glared off in their own directions, resolutely not making eye contact with anyone else. Not even Louis said anything: once you got Zayn shouting, you were done for. He stared homicidally at them all. 

“You better have a good reason for making me wake up half the hotel,” he growled. 

None of them answered. Zayn seemed to grow bored and turned around. “Dickheads,” he snarled.    


A chuckle escaped Niall against his will, because the work “dickheads” always made him giggle like a 12 year old. Zayn whipped around and dashed towards him, grabbing the neck of his shirt with one hand and getting down into his face.   


“Is something funny, Niall? IS THIS FUNNY?”

Niall tried to wrench away, but Zayn's grip was intense. “No, it's not! I was… thinking about something else.”   


“Oh, you're always thinking about something else, aren't you? Fucking useless, you are, contributing nothing to the band! Good for nothing except pissing all the rest of us off!” He released his shirt and shoved against his chest roughly. Niall fell back into the pillows. “Go to Hell, all of you. I'm fucking going to back to bed.”   


Niall kept his eyes on the bed spread, a safe distance from Zayn's retreating form. He was hurt by Zayn's words, but more embarrassed by them. The others probably felt sorry for him, because even though they all agreed with Zayn on some level, it was still a mean thing to actually  _ say _ . He fought the urges to both punch something and cry.    


After a moment of uncertain silence, Harry left the room wordlessly. Louis cleared his throat soon after.    


“I'm gonna go dump the water on Zayn,” he informed them, staring into the dark, shallow contents of the bucket. “Care to join?”   


Though he refused to make eye contact with either one of them, the invitation was clearly for Niall, and it was a nice thing to do, trying to cheer Niall up by making him feel like he belonged while treating him to a bit of revenge… but it would have meant more if Louis wasn't usually the one to make Niall feel like a pointless outsider. Niall shook his head, own gaze fixed on the duvet.    


“No, thanks.”   


Louis picked up the bucket and swept from the room with his usual dramatic flourish, shutting the door stealthily behind him. Niall shifted in bed and squirmed under the covers. Liam watched him apprehensively.    


“It's late,” Niall told him. “You should go back to bed.”   


“You know how Zayn gets when he's tired,” Liam reasoned softly. “He'll probably apologize tomorrow.”   


Liam alone could truly tell when something hit Niall hard. Niall missed their old relationship, when they were best friends and co-depended on each other's trust. A year ago, Niall would have smiled at Liam, dismissing Zayn's words as bullshit because he'd know Liam always had his back and didn't think he was useless. But they weren't the friends they were a year ago. None of them were.    


“Probably,” Niall said seriously.    


There was a flicker of their friendship in Liam's eyes for a moment as he realized Niall was lying to him, but he didn't try to keep convincing him. He accepted the lie, rolled himself back up in the blankets, and turned off the lamp. Within minutes, he was sound asleep. 

From two rooms away, there was a bit of commotion and door slamming during what Niall imagined was Louis carrying out his prank. The screaming was barely a second behind, followed by a mild tussle that resulted in a crash as something fell to the floor. 

Niall heard the hurried footsteps of hotel staff belatedly attempt to intervene. It was so pathetic, it was comical, and he allowed himself a small chuckle.

It was 3:30 AM and Niall Horan was still awake. 

So he stared at the ceiling and ran his tongue over his teeth and fantasized about being a solo artist who was popular enough to pay the bills, but not so popular that he couldn't spend Saturday night playing board games with his girlfriend. She liked Snakes and Ladders. He liked Snakes and Ladders. It was a lovely coincidence.


	2. Disaster at Soundcheck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the Taylor here was supposed to be Taylor Swift, who 2011 me thought would eventually quit music and have her own talk show. Oh, the naivety.

“Louis, back up!” Zayn hissed over his shoulder, one hand covering his mic.  
For once, Louis was pressed up against Zayn because he had no choice, not because he had chosen to get on his nerves. In the backstage darkness, Louis hadn't even known who it was in front of him. 

“Back up where?” Louis demanded. “I haven't got anywhere to move to!”

“I don't give a  _ fuck _ , just get off me!”

Louis turned around as much as he could to face Harry. “Harry, babe, I know I have a great ass, but could you get off it?”

Harry frowned, clenching his jaw. For a whole host of reasons, he had grown to absolutely hate their homoerotic bromance, doubly so when they were off-camera. In the beginning, Larry Stylinson had been a fun game, a diversion from the stress of their life, but before long, one-sided feelings had gotten in the way, and an all-consuming, unrequited adoration on Harry’s side had collided time and time again with resolute nothing on Louis’. It was hardly worth thinking about now, when they hadn’t been friends and barely been bandmates in almost a year. No matter how Harry’s heart twisted guiltily at Louis’ words.

“I can't,” Harry whispered back, aiming his mouth away from the little mic already clipped to his shirt. “I've got...” he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. Five burly men in black security shirts emblazoned with  _ Taylor’s Playhouse _ stood hip-to-hip, creating a wall behind the line of boys. They were flush with Harry.

Louis leaned across Harry and got the attention of the one in the middle. “Oi, could you lot take a step back? We haven't got any room-”

“No,” he answered.

Louis's eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to argue, but Zayn was through waiting for him to move, and he shoved his full weight backwards against Louis. He toppled over in surprise, falling onto Harry, who in turn fell into the wall of guards. They still didn't budge.

Furious, Louis stood up and shoved an unsuspecting Zayn with both hands. He knocked into Niall, who had to grab Liam's shirt to keep from falling. 

Liam whipped around. “Hey!” He snapped. “Knock it off!”   


“He's right on top of me, Liam!” Zayn said.   


“I can't move back!” Louis protested.   


“All of you just shut up!” Liam ordered. “We're gonna miss our cue.”

Everyone turned around reluctantly and stood in single-file silence, which only lasted about six seconds before Louis hit Zayn's shoulder-blade with the butt of his hand. “Tattle tale.”

Liam's jaw clenched, but to his credit, he otherwise ignored it.

“Fuck you, Lou!”

“Well, you're not my type, but why turn down an offer? As long as Harry here doesn’t get jealous.”

“Louis,” Harry warned under his breath.

“Don't touch me, you arsehole!” Zayn snapped.   


“Don't what?”   


“Touch me!”   


“Touch you? Okay!”

Zayn spun around, fist raised, but Liam's arm shot out of nowhere, snagged a handful of his jacket sleeve, and in one swift motion, he swapped places in line with Zayn. Zayn straightened his outfit haughtily, but said nothing.

All was quiet backstage; they could hear every word the overly-chipper host was saying to the person before them. She was thanking him for being “everything I hoped you would be!” and sending the show to commercial with the promise of “more sex gods after the break on Taylor’s Playhouse!” 

Niall rolled his eyes, disappointed that the scuffle hadn't turned into a full-blown fist-fight. Zayn and Louis were good for fistfights lately, and if they hurt each other badly enough, they wouldn't have to do the interview. Niall sighed and imagined what he would have done with the morning if the interview had been canceled. First, he would go get some breakfast because he hadn't eaten yet. What sort of breakfast places were there in New York? Maybe he'd just have a smoothie. He liked smoothies.

“Niall!”

He blinked in confusion and looked around. The curtain in front of him had been pulled open wide enough to admit the band forward one at a time. Zayn was already on the other side, approaching the blonde woman who stood by the couch with her arms open for a hug. Liam's hand urged him forward, and he sprinted out to close the gap, the other three following suit behind him. Niall blushed as he wondered what the fans would speculate was the reason for the delay. They'd probably attribute it to his notorious, perpetual airheadedness. They wouldn't be wrong, either.

The host, Taylor, got the customary handshake, hug, kiss on the cheek from the five boys before they all settled onto the too-small couch. Louis and Harry sat on the seats, while Niall sat up on the back and Liam and Zayn took the arms. 

“Hey there, boys!”   


“Hello!” they responded in expertly practiced unison.

“Welcome to Taylor's Playhouse! Thank you so much for agreeing to do the show.” She smiled coyly and batted long smoky eyelashes over sparkling blue eyes. Her silky golden hair was straightened down flat to her head, but it was completely flattering on her, long and sleek like her body, which was smooshed into a slinky black dress that still managed to look two sizes too small, despite her statuesque figure.

“No problem,” Harry responded with a flirtatious grin. There wasn't a doubt in Niall's mind what the band’s Casanova was thinking. In an American sort of way, she was sexy, but Niall wasn't American, and he didn't see the appeal of a woman who was built like a twelve-year-old boy in his six year old sister's clothes. She had a pretty face, but it was even hard to appreciate  _ that _ because of the very fake-friendly expression stretched across it.   


“We like to do a bit of playing,” Louis teased, casually wrapping an arm around Harry's shoulders. The audience squealed in delight. 

Taylor laughed a laugh that was probably beautiful to most people, but all Niall could hear was how saccharine it sounded. He decided he didn’t like her.

“So we hear! And we've all seen it for ourselves!” Taylor winked and stared directly into the cameras. “Let's take a look at that backstage video we found.” 

As the lights dimmed, she spun her chair around to stare at the screen on the wall behind her. It started playing a fan-made “Best Moments” video from Youtube. The first clip was one Harry had captured a couple years ago of Louis and Zayn sneaking into Niall's room with a cupful of fake plastic spiders while he was sleeping. Niall flushed, remembering what came next: the most embarrassing high-pitched sound he'd ever made. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought about the smoothie he so desperately wanted.

He could hear the sound through his daydream, followed by the audience erupting into a fit of laughter, the rest of the boys joining in because they were supposed to, including Niall. His face was still bright red, but his face usually went red when he was laughing, so no one would notice a difference. The video continued like that, with clips of the boys' madcap antics from all the way back to their early days. Niall wondered if any of their fans could see the difference in the clips between their carefree pranking when they started out to their more strained pranking in the more recent videos. It was so clear to him. 

When it finally ended, the fans cheered and the lights came back up. Taylor waited for the noise to die down before continuing.

“So how much trouble do you guys get into with security?” she asked. “They can't love all the practical jokes!”

“Well, our security team has been with us since we first started out, so they expect it, really, but they still hate it,” Liam said.

“Li here says that like he doesn't!” Louis punched his arm. “He's worse than management!” He pitched his voice to mimic Liam’s low drawl. “'No screaming, no shoving, no pouring water on sleeping people...”

The fans laughed at his poorly imitated Wolverhampton accent. Liam shrugged with a responsible smile. “Someone has to keep everyone in line!”

“Keep ME in line!” one of the fangirls yelled. The rest of them cheered in approval. The boys chuckled. 

“Now, now,” Taylor scolded. “He has a girlfriend! You do, right? Danielle?”

“Yes,” Liam replied with a smile. “It's actually our anniversary today.”

“How long?”   


“Six years.” There was genuine pride in his voice.

The fan audience cheered; they loved Danielle. 

“Congratulations!”   


“Thank you.”   


“That's really impressive! I mean, your job isn't exactly great for a relationship, what with the fans and the traveling… how do you guys keep that romantic spark when you're away so much?”

“Phone sex!” Louis exploded. There were more wild cheers. Liam shook his head, unimpressed. 

“We talk a lot, text a lot, and Facetime a lot,” he explained. “And when we're home, I spend almost all my time with her. I miss her like crazy.”

“Awwwwwwwwww!” the fans cooed. 

“The rest of you are single, though?” Taylor posed, her predatory gaze focused on Harry. He noticed and his lazy grin returned.

“Yeah, we are.”

“Whoooooooooooo!” The fans cheered.

“Yes, very good news!” Emma laughed. “So Li and Danielle are celebrating their 6 th anniversary today. You guys just celebrated your 6 th anniversary as a band not too long ago, right?”

The group tensed only the slightest bit, not enough for anyone else to notice. 

“A year ago now,” Harry said. “We had a huge party at mine and Louis's place in LA. It’ll be seven years next month.”

Harry failed to mention that the party had also been the night he had moved out of he and Louis’s place in LA. The pair of them owned two luxury apartments, one from the band’s early days in London, and one that they’d gotten after their first world tour LA. 

At the time of their fifth anniversary, dynamics within the group had been growing strained, especially the interpersonal relationships, but none of them had suspected those problems would ever reach Harry and Louis’s epic bromance. Larry Stylinson had always existed as this separate, untouchable entity miles above the clouds and everyone back on earth.

But that night, during a nightmarishly disastrous party – in which Zayn showed up bellicosely drunk and had a rocky-style punch out with the frontman of The Wanted; Liam was sexually harassed by Selena Gomez and then in a fistfight with her long-term, jealous boyfriend, fellow heartthrob pop superstar Justin Bieber; Niall fell into a depressive state and let himself be talked into trying cocaine by some Kardashians; and a few members of the press had managed to sneak in and snap pictures of all of it, which got half of young Hollywood into legal trouble after and made a huge PR mess that took management almost two months to clean up – Harry and Louis had gotten into a heated argument upstairs. The next thing they all knew, Harry had packed a bag and was leaving the party early to go home with his second best friend, indie singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. He’d been living in Ed’s guest room ever since. 

“Was that celebrating six years since forming, or five years since your first single?” Taylor inquired, pulling them all back to present day.   


“Six years since we were put together, but five since we released What Makes You Beautiful. Both important days.”

The interview basically went on as usual, with the same standard set of questions about the new album and the tour starting up and who in the band was the best kisser. Liam answered dutifully, Louis cracked half-inappropriate jokes, Harry flirted his way around questions they didn’t like, Niall laughed too much, and Zayn stayed mysterious and quiet.    


Today, Niall’s attention was especially focused on Zayn, the way he seemed to ignore Taylor in favor of staring at his own fingernails. It was part of Zayn's character to be the bored, quiet type. To always seem haughty and dark. It was something he was good at, and when they first got together, it was his shyness that had been interpreted as mystery. Now there was nothing shy about him. Not even the most hard-core fangirl would have guessed that out of public view he was a loud, short-tempered asshole. 

Of course, he wasn’t the only one. Only half- paying attention, Niall missed whatever snide comment Louis made that put a tense expression on Harry’s face and sour look on Liam’s. 

“Alright, boys, I want to thank you so much for your time today here on Taylor's Playhouse,” Taylor, eventually and much to Niall’s relief, concluded. She held up their latest album and told the camera, “One Direction's album, 'Chase It' out everywhere now and you can catch them on their world tour, which starts right here in New York City on August 1st! Hope you can come back and play again soon!” 

She winked as the audience got to their feet and screamed. The closing music played as the cameras turned to get final shots of the Directioners with their posters and tshirts, and the boys rose to their feet, waving, smiling, and blowing kisses at them before being led off stage by security. 

“Oh. My. God. You guys were ah-mazing!” Taylor gushed, joining them backstage. Crew came over to untangle them all from their microphones. “And I mean that! Like, the fans were insane! I'm pretty sure I lost my hearing when I called you guys out! Are they like that everywhere?”

Niall did not miss that Taylor was only looking at Harry, in spite of using 'you guys'. Harry was grinning like a horny idiot. “ _ Ev _ erywhere.” He put heavy emphasis on the first syllable and lingered on the v sound. Louis grinned tightly, while Liam rolled his eyes and Zayn scowled. Niall watched carefully, feeling the familiar twinge of jealousy in his stomach at Harry's natural ability to snag every female he came in contact with. He wasn't attracted to Taylor, but he knew she was considered beautiful, and it wasn't fair.

“Don't you ever get tired of girls  _ screaming  _ your name?” Taylor was not hiding her intentions. She was shifting towards Harry unconsciously, totally ignoring any illusion of a personal bubble. Harry was leaning into her advances. 

“Girls, yes. Women, no,” Harry answered in a buttery voice. Taylor's red lips slowly dragged away from her teeth, revealing a wet, bleached smile.

Finally free from the equipment, Zayn let out a loud noise of disgust and stomped between the two, breaking their magnetism with a harsh, “Get a fucking room, yeah?”

Niall exchanged a look with Liam.

“Thanks,” Niall told the stage hand who was unwrapping him. He nodded and scurried off without a word. He turned around to leave with Liam, but Liam and Louis were both already gone, and Niall was awkwardly alone backstage with the love birds, who were in the act of exchanging phone numbers. 

Niall didn't know whether to wait for Harry, or just go, so he opted for another minute of awkward rocking on his heels before he walked to the door and just waited with it half opened, one foot on the outside. The other boys were hanging out by the van out in the parking lot. Louis spotted him and jogged over. 

“We're waiting on you two,” Louis reported impatiently. 

“No, you're waiting on Harry.” Niall jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, and Louis looked past him to the dimly lit outline of Harry and Taylor. He cupped his hands over his mouth. 

“Oi, Harold! Let’s move that fine little arse of yours, yeah?” 

“You’re a bit fixated on his arse,” Niall observed.

“And you’re a bit fixated on  _ being _ an arse. What's your point?” Louis raised an eyebrow, then screamed, “Harry! Counting to ten and I'm coming in there! One! Two! Three! Ten!”   


Louis barrelled through the door and Niall hadn't even counted “one Mississippi” before Louis reemerged with Harry on his arm.

“You can't just do things like that, Lou,” Harry scolded.   


“I gave a ten second warning,” Louis was unapologetic, dragging a slow-footed Harry behind him.

“Four seconds!”

“You only need one to say, 'Okay, bye'!”

“I had more to say!”

“You did not! You should have walked away once you got her number.”

“She gave you her number?” Niall asked, feigning interest. Feigning was a word, right?

Harry wrenched free of Louis's oppressive fingers and pulled a white scrap of paper from his pockets. “Digit-swag,” he smirked. 

“Nice.” Niall held out his hand for a congratulatory high-five, even though he didn’t think Harry deserved it. Harry ignored it anyway. 

“All in a day’s work.”  
The other boys were already in the van. Niall, Louis, and Harry climbed in and settled into seats after a minor tussle and choruses of protest, Lousettling in next to Liam in the bench seat behind Niall and Harry.

“D’you get her number?” Zayn asked from the backmost seat. He had his headphones already in, and was scrolling through his phone like he couldn’t have cared less about Harry’s pull. Harry rolled his eyes and didn’t bother to answer. Liam had his phone out and tapped at it pointedly. Harry noticed and took his own out to add Taylor’s number. 

“Drum solo!” Louis screeched apropos to nothing. He open-hand slapped Niall in the back of the head with both hands, and beat out a rhythm. 

“Ow!” Niall swatted Louis’s hands away, but he kept trying to drum his skull. “Louis!” He turned and slapped at Louis’s hands as they struggled to hit each other. 

“Knock it off!” Liam yelled as the fighting turned more violent and Louis made an attempt to leap over the seat at Niall. “I’m trying to make a phone call!”   


Louis huffed and sat still. “Tosser,” he muttered, turning on his phone to check Twitter. Zayn was already asleep, and Harry was texting.

“Hey, darling, it’s me,” Liam said into the mouthpiece. He laughed. “Completely shattered! Did you see us on Taylor? Ack, you don’t have to worry about that… yeah, he got her number before we left. I don’t know  _ how _ he does it… Hey! I don’t want to hear that!” Liam moved his head slightly away from the mouthpiece, a jesting smile playing at his lips. “Harry, Danielle says you’re one of the sexiest people she knows.”   


“Oh good,” Harry replied seriously, punching in a number and lifting his own phone to his ear. “Tell her she can spend a night in my room the next time she comes out to visit us on the road.”

Liam frowned. Harry lifted a challenging eyebrow. 

“He said he doesn’t mess with taken women,” Liam relayed with a threatening look.

“I did not!” Harry shouted towards Liam’s phone. “I said if you- Morning, Mum! Did I wake you?”

“That was just Louis and Zayn going at it again,” Liam told Danielle. “I have no idea; I wasn’t listening properly.”

Niall forgot to charge his phone last night and now it was at 6% battery life, so he people-watched out the window. “Where are we going?” he asked loudly, forehead pressed against the glass.

“Niall, I’m on the phone!”   


“Shut up, Niall, I’m trying to talk!”   


Niall scowled at a passerby who couldn’t see him because of the tinted windows. The half-sprinting man was nibbling on a pretzel and avoiding puddles to spare his flip-flopped feet from getting wet. He had a greenish hiking pack, and Niall wondered where he was going, and what the odds were that they were going to the same place. He knew just as much about his own destination as he knew about the man’s. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and texted Paul, their head of security.

**_Were r we goin_ **

The tinted window between the driver’s area and the back seats slid open, and Paul’s familiar head popped through it. 

“We’re going to Rockefeller Plaza to supervise the Today Show stage building, and do a soundcheck to make sure everything’s working,” he answered Niall in his thick, deep, booming voice.

“Paul!” Harry and Liam yelled.

Paul looked around and noticed them belatedly. “Sorry, bo-” he began his apology, which was cut off by Harry slamming the window shut.

“Sorry, Mom, no one knows how to be quiet,” he snapped, glaring accusingly at Niall. 

Niall’s eyes narrowed and he looked back out the window, while Louis yelled louder than usual, “I resent that! I know how to be quiet!” He leaned over the seat again and shoved his face up against Harry’s phone, nearly swallowing the mouthpiece. “Hi, Mummy Anne! I love you!”   


Harry shoved him back. Liam curled towards the other window away from the noise, hand cupped over the receiver. 

Just when Niall was convinced they’d never get there, he spied the colors of the various national flags standing proudly at Rockefeller Center. Thank God.

The van had hardly rolled to a stop before Paul was out of his seat and was holding the door open for the boys. 

“Here’s the deal,” he told them quickly. “Somebody wake up Zayn.”   


Louis pulled a little pillow out from beneath the seat and hit him round the face with it. Zayn swung his fist wildly in Louis’s direction without opening his eyes. Louis leaned back out of reach, then hit him again, harder. Zayn’s eyes snapped open and he jumped over the back of Louis’s seat, landing in a flailing pile of limbs on Liam’s lap. Liam hollered in protest over Louis’s maniacal laughter, Zayn’s shouts of “Fuck you, Lou!” and Harry’s hurried reassurances that he would call his mom back later simply adding to the fracas.

“HEY!” Paul thundered. Everyone stilled and looked up at him. “All of you shut your mouths, sit up, and listen.” 

They all scrambled into neutral positions and looked at Paul’s intimidating posture expectantly. They knew Paul was more than capable of separating three of them from each other at once- it wouldn’t have been the first time. He was the only one who could effectively stop a Louis-Zayn punch out. 

“Look,” Paul began, “I’m tired. I know you’re all tired. We were up late last night,” his sharp eyes jabbed at Louis and Zayn in accusation, “and then had to be ready to leave at the ass-crack of dawn without breakfast. So let’s be clear: no one can nap or eat lunch until we finish all this crap. The faster we finish, the faster we can all wind down for a couple hours until the next interview. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to not fight or whine or cause trouble. Let’s just get this over with, please?”

Everyone nodded, and Niall knew they meant it. His stomach was gurgling at the idea of food, and he wasn’t the only one. 

Paul looked satisfied. “Good.” He looked at someone behind the door and asked, “Are we ready?” before turning back to the boys and stepping away from the door as an all-clear for them to leave the car.

Louis wiggled himself out of the car first, stretching over Harry to do so. Ruffled, Harry extricated his long limbs next, followed by Liam, a half-asleep Zayn, and finally Niall. Paul walked beside them on their left, arms spread wide like a barrier, while their two other security guys, Drew and Erik, flanked them on the right. They were superfluous, since no one was on the sidewalk in front of Rockefeller Plaza; the girls were all waiting in line on the other side of the building, an entire block over. Erik had a bullhorn in one hand. 

“Wanna let them know you’re here?” He offered it to Harry, who groaned.

“Do I have to?” He fussed in clear refusal. Niall frowned. In the early days of the band, Harry would hit the alarm button on the bullhorn and talk to the fans, to alert them to the band’s arrival and rile them up for whatever was to come. Much like everything else that had changed in the last year, Harry no longer cared to interact with the fans any more than his job description demanded. Even a block away, they could hear the excited squeals and high-pitched buzzing of the line on the back of the building, which would immediately turn into screaming for the next hour if Harry were to use the bullhorn. 

But he made no attempt to take it from Erik. Erik retracted his arm, trying to hide the disappointment in his face- Erik used to love helping the fans get crazy. Harry looked remorseful.

“Why don’t you do it, Erik?” He suggested. “You do a great impression of me.”

Paul, Drew, and Erik had been their security team since their days on X-Factor, and unlike Louis, Erik was a master at impressions of them. His face lit up and he held the bullhorn high above his head. The boys covered their ears as they walked to the door. Erik hit the alarm in Harry’s signature pattern and screeches erupted from the line as predicted, exploding into the New York City air like a sound grenade. Erik put it to his lips and shouted, “Hey-yay-yay! Girls run the world, boys bring the noise!” the way Harry used to. 

“Boys rule the world, girls make the noise!” They screamed in return, expertly practiced. 

“Make some noise!” Erik shouted. “Who rules the world?”

“One Direction!” They chanted. “One Direction! One Direction! One Direction!”

“Now scream!”

The response was deafening. Erik hit the alarm again as he shepherded the boys through the glass doors, following in behind them. 

“You’re lucky they couldn’t see us,” Niall muttered into Harry’s ear, not bothering to hide his disapproval. 

“Well, they didn’t,” Harry grunted. “So whatever.”

A professionally dressed man with a clipboard scuttled up to them, looking anxious. “Hi there! I’m Jeremy, and I’ll be taking care of your soundcheck. Sorry about the screaming! We have no idea what happened, they’ve been behaved all weekend. We have security outside trying to control them again.”

Louis grinned broadly at the trouble, but the rest of the boys looked bored. Jeremy was rocking back and forth on his feet, trying to read them.

“Can we just do soundcheck?” Zayn snapped after a moment. Niall’s stomach agreed loudly, his face going tomato red as everyone turned to look at him. Jumpy Jeremy looked to Paul for help, but Paul was wearing his mean security face.

“Um, yes. Um. This way, please.” He reached down and unclipped a walkie talkie from his belt. “Keep the crowd behind the lines, we’re bringing the boys out for soundcheck.”

“Roger that,” came a voice from the other end, a chorus of loud girls going wild behind it.

Jeremy led the boys down a hallway and out a door to the plaza. It always amazed Niall how tiny the brick-layed plaza looked without an army of girls shoved into it, because when it was full, there were thousands packed in, shoulder to shoulder, and Niall could never believe the attendance number they reported, because the space simply didn’t look big enough. 

Right now, however, there was no audience: just a dozen or so members of the building crew scurrying around and doing their jobs. They paused and stood respectfully when they boys came out, awaiting their opinions on the work so far. The stage was almost completely built, all of the electronic equipment set up and waiting. Their instruments were sitting on the stairs.

“We wanted white speakers,” Harry began to Jeremy in a voice bordering on danger.

“We decided the silver would be better,” a familiar voice said from behind them. The nine of them turned to see none other than Simon Cowell, walking up to them next to two of the show’s hosts that Niall could never remember the names of. Harry’s eyes narrowed, not bothering to hold back his disgust. 

Another change in the last year had been the boys’ vehement hatred of their management team. The fans had hated management forever, but the boys hadn’t really had a problem with them until they stopped letting the boys have decision making independence. Which had happened almost immediately after their contract renewal 18 months ago. Before then, the boys had been given at least the illusion of control over their careers. Now, Simon Cowell and his crew loomed over every single thing they did, overriding their wishes and forcing choices.

“Except the white matches the stage.” Harry’s voice leapt over the border.

“And the shoes. And lights. And entire color scheme we picked out,” Louis added, moving to stand next to Harry.

Even Liam joined in, despite his usual attempts to dispel confrontation. “This isn’t even a shade of silver that matches with anything.”

Simon waved all of it off. “We decided to change all the outfits. That silver matches the new scheme just fine.”

“And when were we going to hear about these changes?” Harry demanded.

“We didn’t think you needed to know,” Simon waved again. “It wasn’t important.”

“What- no ‘unimportant’! Are you fucking kidding me?” Zayn protested loudly.

“Zayn,” Liam put a finger to his lips and pointed at the mouth of plaza where the non-visible fans could be heard clearly.

“No!” Louis snapped, voice going up in pitch and volume. “We picked out those outfits!”

“And  _ we _ decided we didn’t like them,” Simon replied apathetically. “So  _ we _ picked new ones.”

“Well,  _ we’re _ not wearing them!”

“Louis-”

“Quiet, Liam!”

“You have no right to change our clothes,” Harry protested without shouting, his deep, husky voice naturally quiet. 

Simon was unimpressed. “They’re just clothes.”

To Simon, of course they were just clothes. Niall was as furious as the other boys, but furious seemed to be his default nowadays. His fury mostly just simmered underneath a thick crust of weariness. He’d already been having a bad day, he was hungry, and now management was overriding what little performance freedom the boys still had. He didn’t even want to know how much of the stage design management had changed, because they had spent hours each designing their own stages and weeks fighting over which elements of each design to use in the final product, and now it had all been for nothing.

The other boys were still arguing with Simon, while the Today Show staff watched helplessly and security watched awkwardly. Losing his patience, Niall made a show of shoving through everyone, stomping up the stairs to stage and grabbing his microphone from its stand, demanding, “Can we just do this already?”

He cringed. The mic was on, and carried his voice through the alley and out to the streets on both sides. The two hosts exchanged a look, Jeremy started frantically speaking into the walkie-talkie, Simon closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, and the other boys just looked at him. 

The fangirls gave a single screech, the only warning of impending disaster. Whoever Jeremy was talking to on the walkie talkie suddenly sounded panicked, shouting and talking fast. Voices that sounded manly and security-like got louder from the other side of the building as the girls got louder. There was a messy cacophony and the boys, security, staff, and Simon stood frozen in place for a few seconds, energy precipitously tense. 

The stillness lasted maybe 20 seconds before security lost control of the crowd, and the riot spilled into the plaza.

A sea of girls rushed forward toward the stage. Jeremy dashed to the door and went through it, the hosts and Simon hot on his heels. Erik and Drew pushed Zayn, Liam, and Harry inside right before the fangirls reached the door, while Paul picked Louis up in one arm and climbed the stage to retrieve Niall in the other arm. The door was not an option, so he jumped off the back of the stage and ran to the front of the building where the van was parked. He threw open the van door and threw them into the back seat, closing the door behind them. He stayed outside of the car with his arms out as the girls ran at the van. 

Niall slammed his hand against the door and hit down the lock button. The car was quickly engulfed by girls, hitting the windows and shouting and flashing them and pulling on the door handles, trying to open them. This was one thing Niall could never get used to, no matter how many times it happened to them. He was breathing hard and cradled his head in his hands. 

“Oh, well done, Niall,” Louis said sarcastically. Niall looked up to see Louis staring at the riot outside like it was a commercial break: boring and inconvenient. “Nothing like letting them all know we were there.”

Niall stared at him in disbelief. Louis dragged his eyes from the window down to Niall. 

“ _ What? _ How is this my fault? We were about to do soundcheck! They would have known we were here from that!”

Louis sighed dramatically. “We’ll never know now. Tragic.”

Niall fought a strong urge to punch him in the mouth. Louis raised a challenging eyebrow over a nasty grin like he knew what he was thinking, and Niall cradled his head again to keep his hands busy.

It took the better part of an hour before the girls were all rounded up and put back into line and under control, with no small amount of help from the NYPD, who went as far as suggesting the whole event be called off and all the girls be sent home. Niall and Louis had to spend the entire time silently locked in the safety of the van. Paul came to get them once the coast was totally clear. 

“A right nightmare, that was,” Louis said as way of greeting when Paul opened the door. 

Paul grimaced. “The police wanted us to cancel the performance.”

Louis let out a bark of laughter. “I can imagine Simon’s reaction to  _ that _ .”

Niall could, too, and it wasn’t pretty. A big part of him wished the police could have pulled rank and  _ ordered _ them to cancel the performance.

“Let’s get you two into the green room,” Paul said, ushering them across the sidewalk. 

“The green room?” Louis asked, opening the building’s glass door. “We aren’t doing soundcheck, then?”

“The fangirls knocked everything over and broke Harry’s drum tray,” Paul explained. “It’ll be a couple hours before we can do soundcheck.” He stepped in front and led them to a room off the hallway that Erik and Drew were stationed outside the door of. Drew smiled kindly at them and held open the door. The other boys were already inside, but there was no sign of Simon or Jeremy or anyone else. 

Once upon a time, Liam and Harry would have leapt up and ran over to Niall and Louis, giving them hugs and discussing how  _ insane _ that was. Liam would have listened with a trace of panic still in his deep brown eyes, biting his nails, and Louis would have laughed at him, Harry wrapped like a grinning spider monkey around his neck. Zayn would have gotten to his feet and added his two cents from across the room, and Niall would have thrown a reassuring punch at Liam’s shoulder, taking his attention from Lou’ teasing to his own soft smile, conveying with his own blue eyes that the worst was over, they could breathe, and he  _ was  _ overreacting, but it was alright, because they still loved him for it. Liam would have smiled, neck muscles visibly relaxing out, and he would have returned an unconvincing smile, but one that was unraveling stress even as Niall looked at it. 

They all would have crashed onto the couch and talked and tussled and just hung out until they got green-lighted to do sound check. 

Now, the boys couldn’t have cared less when the door opened. Liam was sitting on a windowsill in the corner, phone to his mouth, presumably talking to Danielle again. Harry’s thumbs were padding against his iPhone screen steadily, the theme to Angry Birds playing through the speakers. Zayn was next to him on the couch in full recline, a hat covering his face. He flicked the lid up to see who had walked it, but otherwise was immobile. Liam spared barely a glance at them, his speech flow uninterrupted. Harry lifted the phone higher to look at them out of his periphery without pulling his eyes from the phone before returning it to his lap.

“You bring any fangirls down with you, Niall?” He asked, no trace of humor in his voice; it was a joke, but Niall wasn’t allowed in on it.

Niall felt his indignation bubble up again. “I didn’t do it,” he denied through clenched metal teeth. “All I did was talk into a microphone. We were about to do soundcheck, which consists of  _ talking into a microphone _ .”

“You sing during soundcheck,” Zayn muffled from under the hat.

“Which would have caused an even bigger frenzy!” Niall exploded. “Five minutes wouldn’t have made a difference! It would’ve had the same effect!”

“But like I said, we’ll never know now, will we?” Louis plopped down disruptively between Harry and Zayn, leaning into Harry’s line of sight. Harry struggled to lift the phone up away from Louis before he could try to take it from him. The conversation should have, and normally would have, ended there. Niall watched Harry and Louis’s effortless normalcy with resentment, wondering why every argument in the band ended with him retreating to nurse his wounds.

“They would have been fine if Harry hadn’t riled them up like an idiot,” Niall accused coldly. 

Harry took his eyes away from the game and glared at Niall with surprise; obviously, he had expected Niall to drop it. The last thing he would have expected was for Niall to perpetuate the discussion by holding him responsible. “Excuse me? That was  _ Erik. _ ”

“You told him to!”

“So  _ you _ made the fans crazy, and somehow it’s  _ my _ fault?”

“They were _ already _ crazy because of you!”

Harry rose to his feet, throwing the phone down into Louis’s lap. But Louis was no longer interested in the game; he was watching the show. 

“ _ I _ didn’t do  _ anything _ ,” he growled. “Stop blaming everyone else for  _ your _ dumb move.”

“It’s  _ not my fault _ !”

“Hang on, babe,” Liam half-yelled into the mouthpiece, turning from the window to address the room. “Niall, could you please shut up and stop being rude?”

“ _ You _ shut up!” Niall snapped.

Liam blinked and Niall flinched inwardly. He never spoke to Liam like that. None of them did, except maybe Louis when Liam was trying to police him into behaving. But that was different. It was done with Louis’s usual wild-child attitude and wasn’t ever really serious. This was definitely serious.

Niall bit his lip to keep from apologizing, because they expected him to apologize, and he was sick and tired of it. He was sick of them knowing they could walk all over him, and he was sick of only ever half-heartedly fighting back. He was tired of being the band victim. He was tired of all of it.

He felt a twinge of guilt that Liam had to be the one he took his wrath out on, but it made sense, didn’t it? People always attacked the one person who never hurt them, because they knew that person wouldn’t retaliate. And Niall couldn’t seem to stop.

“Go in another room or something when you’re on the phone, okay? Don’t expect us to drop to our knees and worship you in silence just because you wanna talk to your girlfriend for the millionth time today!”

Harry sat down, looking between the two, aghast. Louis was on the edge of the sofa, and even Zayn had moved his hat to its rightful place on top of his head so he could watch.

Liam’s eyes were barely wider than usual, and his mouth was only open a smidgen, but it was the brushed pink on his cheeks that made Niall feel guilty. And that only pissed him off, because why was he so weak willed? Why could Zayn and Louis and even Harry to a degree be so verbally vicious without so much as batting a sympathetic eyelash, but he couldn’t even simply tell Liam off for being bossy?

Because Liam  _ hadn’t _ been bossy. He even said “please”. 

Like someone was shooting him from behind with a guilt hose, he felt soaked and full and heavy. He wanted to curl up in a ball and hide in a corner until he could fit into a time rift and fall back ten minutes. But his self-preservation was stronger, and he kept his mouth clamped shut and kept his face contorted into what he hoped was a fierce expression. He figured it was close enough, since Liam’s became defensive as he scanned it. His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. 

Without taking them off Niall, he told Danielle, “Gimme a second, love,” and walked calmly to the door, banging shoulders with him as he passed. 

Niall automatically shoved Liam hard with both hands, causing him to stumble and almost drop his phone. He took a deep breath before straightening to face Niall again. Niall raised an eyebrow belligerently, suddenly hungry for a fight. Liam stood a couple inches taller, but Niall’s testosterone was surging into his brain and he wasn’t thinking clearly. The well-defined muscles in Liam’s upper body seemed like less of a threat and more of a challenge. 

“I’m not doing this,” Liam commanded flatly, an air of finality passing between them. Their gazes lingered on each other for an extra second before Liam left the room, the door slamming behind him in an uncharacteristic show of anger. Niall kept his eyes on the closed door, too embarrassed to face the judgment of the other boys.

“Christ,” Louis breathed eventually, breaking the phlegmatic silence. Niall spun his head around. “Little Niall’s fighting back now, is he?”

Niall recoiled from his words like a slap in the face. He shrugged in a transparent attempt at nonchalance and went to sit on the windowsill Liam had just vacated, fully aware of the other pairs of eyes watching him, stupefied and wary. He flashed back to last night when he was defending Liam against Louis’s prank, arguing that he shouldn’t make his anniversary worse because he already couldn’t be with Danielle who was dancing on tour in Australia. And now _ he _ was the one doing the damage, bitching at him for trying to spend time with her in the only way he could. He wished he had drowned in the fangirl tide.

The sounds of Angry Birds, Zayn’s heavy breathing, and Louis’s whine of “There’s no food in this refrigerator!” gradually resumed behind him. He stared out the window at the sidewalk outside. 

People walked past, but it was one way glass, and no one looked at him. A man on a cellphone with a travel bag rushed by in shiny shoes that were so tight he had a slight limp. A fake-tanned jogger and his long-legged dog overtook him a couple yards down the sidewalk. A girl with a purse almost as big as she was raced in the opposite direction, digging around in her pockets and flinging coins out all over as she attempted to extract a monstrously large smart phone from her baggy cargo pants. Her face turned red and she scooped it all up, leaving a few pennies and scraps of paper in her haste. She jammed the handful in her pocket and scurried away, but slowed after only a few steps, jogging back to the pennies and flipping a couple of them so they were all heads-up. Niall’s lips curled up in a reflexive smile. 

The sound of the refrigerator door slamming dragged Niall back to the green room and reminded him that he’d been promised lunch. His stomach gurgled.

“11:54,” Harry answered before he could even ask, eyes glued to the game.

Louis banged on the door. “Oi! Paul! We want food!” He shouted.

The door opened and Paul stuck his head in. “Please?”

“Please,” Harry said sweetly.

Paul stuck in his arms and tossed in bags of McDonald’s take-out. They randomly landed on the floor. “ _ Bon appetite _ ,” he saluted as he withdrew.

“Is Li out there?” Niall asked before he could stop himself.

“Yep,” Paul said shortly before closing the door with a little more force than necessary. Niall felt the guilt swell into his throat. Great. Everyone knew. 

“What’ve we got?” Zayn asked, suddenly wide awake and sitting upright.

Louis sat pretzel style on the floor and pawed through the bags. “Fries, burger, burger, burger, fries, what the…” He pulled out a yogurt parfait gingerly, holding it way from himself like it might be contagious. “Is this a joke?”

Harry locked his phone and slipped it into his pocket, then clapped his hands and held them out. “Pass it here.”

“ _ Why? _ ” Louis choked. “It’s covered in chunky dirt.”

“It’s granola,” Harry said impatiently. “I want it.”

“But there’s actual  _ fruit _ in it!” Louis protested. 

Harry leaned forward and clutched at the air futility. “Godammit, Lou, just give it to me!”

“Oh, I’ll give it to you, all right,” Louis responded cheekily, his eyes sparkling with innuendo.

Harry snatched it from him. “How many times do I have to tell you to knock that off?” he scolded. “Pass me some fries.”

“But fries have trans fats! And potatoes are just empty carbs!”

Harry scowled down at Louis and flung the parfait at him. It burst open in his lap, splashing all over, but mostly spilling out into his pants. 

“Harry!” Zayn hollered, jumping up belatedly, wiping at the few droplets of yogurt that had landed on his left pant leg. “The fuck!”

Louis bolted to his feet, but slipped in yogurt and fell back on his butt, smearing the parfait all over. “It’s all over me!” he screeched, half serious.

Harry got up and grabbed one of the bags, bringing it unabashedly back to his seat on the couch. He opened it and crammed a pinch of fries into his mouth. Louis cupped a glob of yogurt in his hand and flung it at Harry’s perfect face. His aim was off, though, and the yogurt hit a bullseye right on the middle of Zayn’s shirt.

He wasn’t really in the mood for McDonald’s anyway, Niall told himself as he escaped the room pre-homicide. He slammed the door behind him, making Erik and Drew jump. They looked at him quizzically. 

“You might want to get in there,” he told them. There was a huge crash from the room, and they rushed in, slamming the door, too. Niall turned to his right and glanced further down the hall. Paul was sitting in the dark corner at Liam’s feet while he talked on the phone. Liam caught Niall looking and turned his back to him. Paul’s accusatory eyes lingered for only an extra second before he, too, turned away from Niall. 

He frowned. Should he go over and apologize? No one was there to see it, and he really felt like he needed to. But if he and Liam were getting along again, it wouldn’t matter that no one had  _ seen _ him apologize. 

He sighed. The other boys could think whatever they wanted: Liam was the only semi-friend he had left, and he didn’t deserve to be treated like this. Niall may not like it, but the right thing to do was apologize. 

And if he kept telling himself that, he might actually believe it.

His growling stomach interrupted his thoughts and he froze midstep. No. Apologizing was admitting a mistake. And it was not a mistake to stand up for himself! He finally had the balls to do it, and the other boys finally saw him behaving like something that wasn’t a doormat. He just couldn’t give up that edge. Nope.

He shook his head out, two sides of himself at war- the bully and the bullied. A man was innocent if he murdered in self-defense, right? So he was innocent because he was an asshole in self-defense. 

Right? 

He shook his head again, harder, trying to make his thoughts stop swimming and his emotions stop bucking and curling in his stomach. His stomach made yet another plea for food. Maybe if he had something to eat, he could think more clearly. All he had to do was get into the room long enough to grab a bag, then he could eat it out here in the hallway. He hadn’t even finished the thought, though, before the door was yanked open by Erik.

“Paul,” he said desperately. There was a cry of pain, some shouting, and another bang from behind him. Paul bolted up and rushed into the room, leaving Liam and Niall in the hall alone. The door slammed shut, and the quiet came back. Liam’s back tensed up, but other than that, he made no acknowledgement of Niall’s presence. Niall stood by helplessly. 

There was no chance he was going back into that room now. But he was practically on the brink of starvation. His stomach agreed loudly. 

“Okay, okay,” he said. What he really wanted was a sandwich, one of those massive American submarines that no human could possibly finish in one sitting. 

There was a sandwich shop on Broadway that he always liked to visit when they were in the city, and it made those very sandwiches. Niall liked the owner, too: he was amicable, and he never charged Niall for extra toppings. It was weird, but being given that little bit of unnecessary leeway made him feel like a normal twenty-two-year-old. Most young guys weren’t famous and rich, so it was normal to be given two bucks of free food from someone who liked them. And it wasn’t like the owner didn’t know who he was: he always had Paul with him because the idea of the any of them being allowed without security on the streets of New York City was just  _ ridiculous _ -

Niall put his ear to the door. It still sounded like a combat zone inside, enough so that Niall had no reason to believe any of their security would be leaving in the time it took him to run up the hallway and out the door. He could maybe even make it a couple of blocks before anyone noticed his absence. 

Liam was still ignoring him. Niall’s anger flared. He could probably make it back to Montreal before anyone  _ cared _ about his absence. He pat his pockets. Wallet in one. Phone in the other. He took a deep breath and sped toward the exit, his squeaky converse alerting every one of his escape, but he didn’t care, and all he could do was hope no one else did. He slammed both hands against the door and shoved it open hard, running out across the street. Or at least, that was his plan before the honking car snapped him out of his determined trance and he leapt back onto the sidewalk before the cab could mow him down. 

He looked around nervously, hearing the girls on the other side of the building. They couldn’t see him, but he suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable. If a group of fangirls saw him right now, they could easily overpower him and tear off his clothes, and no one was there to stop them. He shuddered at the thought. Was it worth it? Should he go in and wait for someone to take him? 

He kicked at the sidewalk in frustration. What the hell was wrong with him that he was helpless at the hands of a bunch of _ girls _ ? He hated his life so much. How many  _ other _ guys couldn’t just go  _ get a freaking sandwich _ when they got hungry? Why was his life so _ ridiculous _ ? 

He didn’t want to be a celebrity anymore. He hated it, and he hated the band, and the stupid fangirls, and the overbearing security. All the money in the world wasn’t worth the miserable bubble he was living in. He was an adult; he wanted to make his own decisions. And he wanted a freaking sandwich. So he was going to get a freaking sandwich.

There was a crosswalk at the end of the block and he made his way to it, pausing when a glint caught his eye: four little Abe Lincolns sitting proudly, offering themselves to him. He remembered the girl coming back to flip them over, making sure even in her hurry that someone who needed the luck could use them. 

He knelt and grabbed all of them, thinking of what awaited him when he returned. Panicked security, furious management, silent Liam. He would need every bit of luck he could get.


	3. Hayley at First Sight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about the penny flipping: finding a penny on the street only brings good luck if the pennies are heads-up. If tails-up, they don't do anything. Hayley flipping pennies demonstrates that she wants to help people any way she can.

In what was most likely an apology from the universe for giving him such a crappy day, Niall managed to make it to Mike’s Sandwich Shop without anyone recognizing him. There was an older woman who came up to him, and he braced for an autograph request for a daughter or niece, but all she asked for were directions to Grand Central Station. He pointed her in what he hoped was the right direction, but he figured she wasn’t putting much stock in what he said because of his accent, and he didn’t mind the racism for once, because he was pretty sure he was wrong anyhow. He’d gotten lost twice himself.

Almost an hour later, Niall walked into the air conditioned oasis of Mike’s shop and inhaled deeply. It smelled cool and familiar, like a refrigerator. The taste of cold cuts and cheeses hung in the air, and the warmth of fresh bread drifted beneath it. The white tile floor was scuffed and worn from traffic, but clean and shiny with mop soap. A huge sign advertising the options and prices hung behind the big glass-and-silver counter, which was covered in cookies and bags of chips. At the end was a cooler with all sizes and flavors of soft drinks starting out temptingly. Tall round tables sat against the perimeter of the shop, their stools eerily empty, a ghostly contrast to the busy street just on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the shop. 

Once school got out for summer, any day now, the place would be packed from open to close: the prices were cheap and the delicious portions were huge. But during the off-season, dinner was the busy time, the shop being mostly bare until four o’clock. A timer dinged and the smell of French fries puffed into the air as they were pulled from the fryer. Mike’s shop was famous for those fries. Niall’s stomach let out a particularly long rumble as he remembered. 

Mike jumped and spun around at the sound with the fryer basket in hand. Niall grinned sheepishly and waved. 

“Ay! Ireland!” He said amicably, his voice even broader than he was. “Be with you in a sec!”

“Take your time,” Niall said, even as his stomach contradicted him. Mike’s returning laugh was boisterous. That was a word, right? He slid the plate of fries over to him across the counter and followed after, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Help yourself,” he said, taking a couple off the plate for himself.

“Whose are they?” Niall asked hesitantly.

“Mine! I don’t deserve a lunch break?” He raised an eyebrow over playful green eyes. Niall grinned again and snagged a handful, shoving them into his mouth so fast he almost choked.

“Slow down, Ireland,” he told him, amused. “They’re not going anywhere.”

“Flarrin,” he apologized with his mouth full. His stomach glugged pleasantly as he swallowed, satisfied.

Mike watched him shovel fries into his mouth for a minute. “Where’s your friend?” he asked as though just noticing Niall was abnormally alone. 

Niall tensed at the word ‘friend’, thinking of the way Liam had looked at him in the green room before he walked out. “Which one?” he said carefully.

Mike made a gesture of largeness. “The big one you’re always with.”

He meant Paul. Mike thought of Niall’s body guards as his friends, which was both sad and a little bit true. “He’s busy,” he told him. Definitely not a lie.

Mike didn’t look convinced. “So they let you off the leash?”

Niall squirmed, avoiding Mike’s probing gaze. He didn’t answer.

“Is that such a good idea?”

“Made it here just fine, didn’t I?” He muttered, watching his hand ferry the fries from the plate to his face.

Mike threw his hands up in immediate surrender. “I’m not telling you off, Ireland. I’m just asking.”

Niall grunted and wiped the last of the salt off the plate with the last couple of fries. “Could I get some more?”

“You’re paying for these ones,” Mike said normally, whisking the plate over to the fryer. 

Niall grinned again. He wished he could flip his mood around as easily as people like Mike. “Make it a large, then.”

“That  _ was _ a large,” he called over the sizzle of the next batch. “You’re gonna be in trouble when your metabolism levels out.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen today.”

“You want a sandwich to go with them?”

“Definitely!” Niall leaned back and looked up at the menu, realizing he hadn’t decided on what he wanted when he came in, other than ‘everything’. Now that he had something in his stomach and the smell of more on its way, the breads on the shelf next to him didn’t look so small. Mike wandered back over to him. “What’re you thinking?”

“Hm…” It all sounded good, but he knew better than to make the mistake of ordering a sandwich with a bit of everything. He did that once and it was disgusting. “I dunno.”

“You want a suggestion?” He offered.

The bell rang behind them to signal another customer, and before Niall could answer, Mike’s face froze and he looked at down at Niall uneasily. Niall’s eyes widened, his heartbeat picking up when Mike’s mouth tightened as he inspected the customer behind him. Niall was awash in terror as he wondered who had found him to make Mike look like that. Paul was a friendly face, so Mike wouldn’t look so anxious if it was him. Was it someone from management? Would they have sent Simon Cowell, the big man himself, to retrieve Niall? Or had they sent police after him?

“Um.” The small voice cleared her throat. Niall’s hands balled into fists on the counter at the sound and his jaw clenched. 

It was a  _ fangirl. _

He felt fear from this morning’s attack shoot through him, followed by the same anger he had felt in the green room. He wasn’t a victim. He could defend himself, just like he had with Liam, and he  _ would _ . 

He felt irrational resentment toward the stranger behind him. This was  _ her _ fault. All of it was. Without their fans, none of this would be happening. He’d just be a random young lad living in Mullingar, out-of-place and anonymous, but  _ surviving _ , surviving in a way that he just  _ wasn’t  _ anymore. She and everyone like her were to blame for his bad day, week, month, year. 

“Niall?”

There was so much hope and anticipation in the word, in the innocently pleasant way she said his name, that he lost it. He slammed his fist against the counter.

“Goddammit,  _ what?! _ ” he exploded. “What’s so important that I can’t even eat? How about  _ no _ because  _ I _ want  _ you _ people to  _ leave me the hell alone _ !” He whipped around and shoved her back roughly, which was completely uncalled for and totally unfair and almost definitely assault. 

She held her balance, but dropped her phone hard, which miraculously clattered to the floor without breaking. He looked down at the screen, the camera app already open, then looked back up at the girl. Her hazel eyes were wide and startled, her body shrunk back away from his hands defensively. Her mouth was small, frowning, and her nostrils were flared like she was going to cry. 

Niall’s mind reeled as he took in what he had done, and the cloud of guilt already surrounding him from Liam expanded. Fear bubbled up, too. He just assaulted a fangirl: he could be sued, arrested, or worse. 

She would go on Twitter and Tumblr and tell everyone, or go straight to the media and report it. Niall, who was always good to the fans, talked to them when they were in small queues and did live streams after shows and had #ask sessions when he was on the bus, was a nasty monster. 

This girl had probably bought the album and forced her friends to watch their last music video a million times and dragged her father to a concert with her. She had probably dreamed about meeting them someday, and this was finally it, finally the luckiest day of her life, and he had ruined it. She looked totally broken.

_ Shit. _

He opened his mouth to attempt somehow to apologize for all the damage that was really irreparable, but she looked down at her feet and mumbled, “I- yeah…sorry,” and rushed out of the shop, not even bothering to pick up the phone.

_ Shit, shit, shit. _

He turned around and looked at Mike, who was regarding him with caution. 

“She’s a regular,” was all Mike had to say. It felt like an order. Niall groaned, exasperated – but at  _ who? _ – and snatched up her phone before chasing after her. 

“Wait!” he yelled when he stepped outside. He looked left and right, spying her power-walking up the street the way he’d come. “Hey! Wait!” He ran, winding through people to catch up with her, skidding to a halt in front of her to make her stop. Well, he tried, anyway, but the angle was wrong and his timing was off, and he just managed to trip on her foot and fall over in front of her, nearly knocking her over for the second time. She grabbed his arm to catch him, but didn’t quite manage it, and she leaned over his body, arms tangled awkwardly beneath him. He scrambled to his feet as fast as he could, flailing wildly. The girl was looking around, worried at the attention they were attracting.

“You… you dropped your… shit,” he panted loudly, doubling over to catch his breath.

“Niall,” she said in an undertone. “You can’t just…” She tugged him out of the way, pushing him to stand next to a garbage can. He resisted.

“No,” he said breathily, wrenching away from her. “I have to… to… I’m sorry I yelled, okay, I… I had no right…”

“Calm down, okay, people are _ looking _ -”

“No,  _ forget _ the people,” he gasped. “I need… you… ”

She covered his mouth to shut him up, carefully leaving his nostrils clear so he could catch his breath. He got his first good look at her and inhaled sharply.

It was the penny girl. She had the same gigantic purse and loose tan cargos. She was wearing a battered, stained pair of tennis shoes that looked like they hadn’t been white in some time, and a form-fitting black v-neck. Her sun-kissed face, brushed with color from walking the streets of the city in June, was red and blotchy and wet, right down from her teary eyes to her heart-shaped chin. Her dirty blonde hair was bobbed, bangs blended in to the rest of the length and tucked behind her ears. It blew around like feathers in the perpetual wind. The hand covering his mouth was small and rough, with short but slender fingers and unpainted nails that were clearly manicured by teeth. 

She was only a couple of inches shorter than he was, five-five or five-six, and up close she looked older than she had in the sandwich shop, maybe even Niall’s own age. She was extremely cute. Maybe even pretty when she wasn’t crying.

Crying. He made her cry. His eyes pinched together.

“You good?” she checked when he’d calmed down. He lifted his own hand to cover hers and pull it away from his mouth. She recoiled from his touch and the guilt came back in full-force.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Look, I am _so_ _sorry_ ,” he began, but she shook her head.

“No harm done,” she dismissed flippantly.

He gaped in disbelief. “Don’t,” he almost growled. “You’re crying, for God’s sake!”

“Not anymore.” She stuck her chin out, but lowered it again and softened her eyes. “Look, don’t beat yourself up, okay? You had a point, just because you… I mean… you deserve lunch without getting stalked. I should respect that. You don’t need to apologize.”

It was like she was reading his mind, saying exactly what he was thinking, but hearing  _ her _ say it just made him feel worse.

“I need to,” he argued. “You _ don’t _ have to respect it. What are the chances you’re ever gonna see me again?”

She winced, looking like she wanted to agree with him, but holding her ground. “That’s not really your problem, though.”

“I shouldn’t have shoved you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she answered shortly. He tried to see what she was thinking, but she was unreadable. “I’m not going to tell anyone,” she promised quietly, sadness creeping back into her eyes, suspecting that this was the real reason he’d come to apologize. 

And it  _ kind of _ was, but it wasn’t the only reason. He didn’t want her to think her feelings meant nothing to him. She was already pulling away, ready to keep walking and move on with her life. It was ironic: Niall had actually defended himself, and still ended up feeling helpless.

“Wait.” He put a hand on her arm. She looked down at it, but didn’t move it. That was a step, at least. “Let me… did you come in to get a picture?”

It took her a minute to decipher his half-question. “I… no, it’s…” she waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t need a picture.” She looked pained by her own words.

Niall felt a surge of- what was that emotion? Gratitude? Something else? He didn’t understand her. Fangirls were usually demanding and self-seeking around the boys, not caring what lengths they went to just to get a picture with one of them. He knew that from years of insane experiences. Yet here he was, donating his time to the fangirl so she could have a picture, and she was turning him down. Because she didn’t want to upset him. She would rather make him happy than have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The memory of her coming back to flip the pennies for people even though she was in a hurry popped into his head. She wasn’t a selfish person; she genuinely cared about people.

She genuinely cared about  _ him _ . Knowing that felt surreal. No one had genuinely cared about him in a really, really long time.

Her pennies were heavy in his pocket. They were supposed to bring him luck. Maybe this was it.

“I mean,” he explained, “were you coming in for food, or because you saw me?”

She cocked her head to one side curiously. “Food. I always come after class before work.”

“Let me buy you a sandwich, then,” he said. It was really the least he could do.

She stared at him, dumbstruck. “You don’t need to,” she replied when she could remember how to work her mouth.

Niall fought a smirk. That wasn’t a no. “I want to.”

All she did was gawk. It seemed the Directioner hormones were finally kicking in. Niall glanced around, aware of eyes on him. A couple of young women down the block were looking at him, whispering to each other, trying to work out if it was really him. He frowned. She noticed his frown and followed his eyes to the girls. 

“Fine,” she agreed, “let’s get inside.”

They half-sprinted back to Mike’s. He was already at the counter waiting for them when they walked in. Niall’s fries were waiting on a plate, warm and still wet with grease. Niall smiled and walked up to take a few. 

“Okay,” he said with his mouthful, inspecting the board one final time. “I’m gonna have a turkey, ham, lettuce, pickles, mayo, and extra pepper jack cheese half-sub,” he told Mike. “And she…” he pointed to the girl, realizing she hadn’t introduced herself.

“I’m Hayley.” She smiled.

He smiled back. “I’m Niall.”

She laughed. “I know.”

He blushed. “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Hayley’s gonna have fries and whatever sandwich she usually gets.”

Mike raised an eyebrow and looked to Hayley for confirmation.

“Whatever the daily is,” she qualified. “And no fries.”

“Didn’t think so,” Mike laughed. He moved down to make the sandwiches and Niall turned his body to invite Hayley to stand next to him. 

“You don’t like fries?” he asked when she stepped forward.

She scrunched her nose and shook her head, shyly noncommittal. “I do, but like…I dunno, they’re just empty carbs.”

Louis had said the same thing to Harry earlier, and it made Niall laugh. “Do you get those parfaits at McDonald’s?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I like the granola.”

He laughed again. She was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, but fighting a smile. He liked that. 

“It’s a joke,” he informed her.

“Ohhhh,” she said with an understanding nod. “Band joke.”

Like the band was an exclusive club. He thought of upsetting Liam and Zayn pounding on Louis who couldn’t stay sober and Harry sleeping with anything that had legs. “I guess,” he said glumly.

She cocked her head curiously again, but didn’t inquire further. She was reading his crumpled posture and injured expression, the gesture being so similar to what Liam used to do to him that Niall wanted to curl up in a ball.

“Where’s Paul?” She asked eventually.

It took Niall a confused few seconds of wondering how the hell she knew Paul before he remembered she was a fan. “He’s with the other guys.”

“What about Erik and Drew?”

“Them, too.”

“So how did you get out by yourself?”

Mike slowed down and was taking care not to make much noise so he wouldn’t miss Niall’s response. Niall inhaled slowly, trying to keep his face blank, but knowing he was transparent. 

“I used the door,” he said simply, busying his jittery fingers with more fries.

It had the effect he wanted. She laughed, and he chanced a look at her. He’d been right in assuming she would be pretty when she stopped crying. 

“Seriously, though.” The smile stayed on her face. Niall’s eyes narrowed. He should have known she wouldn’t be distracted: she was so similar to Liam already, and Liam never would have let Niall pull one over on him.

“Seriously? I just left.” He braced for the follow-up question, but she didn’t ask it. She didn’t have to. She could see it in every shift of his body.

“Daily special,” Mike announced, sliding the wrapped sandwich down the counter to them. Niall caught it with one hand and passed it to Hayley. She put one hand on it, and their eyes locked hard, holding it together. Something passed through Niall and he fought the urge to shiver.

“Thanks,” she said numbly, and he let go of it like she’d zapped him. She opened her purse and dropped it in. “I guess I’ll… see you around. Er. Or something. It was nice meeting you, Niall.”

Niall was taken aback. “You’re not gonna eat it?”

She looked unnervingly conflicted. “Yeah, I will, but I’ll just go eat it outside. Give you some space.”

“It’s hot outside.”

“It could be worse.”

“Stay in here and eat, sweetheart.” It was Mike who suggested it, bringing over Niall’s sub. Hayley looked a little disappointed, but she looked at Niall hopefully. He jerked his head at a table in the far corner. 

“Yeah you… can sit with me. If you want.” There was no reason for this strange and random bout of nervousness. Ten minutes ago, he was fine. 

A huge smile spread across her face, and Niall’s stomach flipped. 

“If you want me to.” She was trying to be casual, but she was almost literally glowing with joy, and there was no hiding it. 

“I do,” he said honestly, realizing how much he meant it as the words stumbled out of his mouth.

Somehow, her grin grew wider. She followed him to the table he had indicated and took the seat facing the door so that Niall’s back would be to the windows. 

“Take off the hoodie,” she told him. He furrowed his brow. “It’s red,” she explained. “You’d be less obvious without it.”

Feeling a little silly, he shed his signature red top – today, a sleeveless zip-up hoodie to accommodate the June heat – to reveal the light grey tee beneath. Her eyes scanned him quickly and jumped back to his face like he wouldn’t notice she was totally checking him out. She blushed, and he took his turn checking  _ her  _ out. She blushed harder. 

“I’m American,” she explained apologetically.

He made a face. “So?”

She squirmed. “Nothing, I just… I eat.”

She was referring to the fact that she wasn’t stick thin, not shaped like the curveless models Harry and Louis went for or Liam’s dancer girlfriend. She wasn’t fat, though. She wasn’t even chubby, really, either. She was soft and round in all the right places, and Niall couldn’t say he objected to the tempting bit of cleavage poking out of her shirt.

“Yes,” Niall said. “People tend to do that.”

She caught the subtext of ‘I like it’ in his eyes, and she seemed to relax a bit. “Especially around me. I’m a chef,” she clarified.

“Really?” Niall asked, impressed. He couldn’t even reheat food in the microwave without ruining it. 

“Yep,” she said proudly. “That’s what I’m going to school for, finishing my Master’s in Gastronomy. I work in a kitchen, too. That’s why I’m dressed like-” She ran a hand up and down in front of her, gesturing to her clothes. “I can’t wear anything nice, or it’d get messed up.”

Niall realized he hadn’t touched his sandwich yet, despite being the type of person to take his first bite before he even sat down. That wasn’t weird, he told himself. He just scarfed down a metric ton of fries a minute ago, after all. It was perfectly natural to forget about the delicious-smelling food sitting right under his nose. He crammed one end into his mouth, tearing off a hunk like a dinosaur in a cheesy movie. 

Hayley watched him, her deep eyes pulling in layers and layers and unspoken thought. He swallowed without chewing, gagging as the saliva-soggy bread dragged down his throat.

“They give me nice clothes,” he said bluntly, trying to distract her from reading him like a book.

Her brow furrowed. “Who?”

“Dunno.” He took another, more human-sized bite. “The clothes just show up.”

When he looked at her again, he recognized the fangirl expression of excitement at talking to an One Direction member about their One Direction life. 

“What, just like you find clothes in your suitcase that you didn’t pack?”

“We don’t pack our own suitcases.” That information felt weirdly private, Niall admitting out loud to a regular person that none of them had control over their lives. Anyone else probably would have seen it as a diva celebrity thing, that they couldn’t be bothered to waste time packing their own things, when in reality, it was because they weren’t allowed. But Hayley didn’t miss the truth: her face transformed again as she made the connection, all traces of fangirl evaporating for a second, leaving behind sympathy. Niall couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just chewed and looked at the table, resisting the magnetism that was trying to pull his eyes back to hers. 

“So do you have a show tonight?” She digressed.

He allowed himself to look thankful. “Tomorrow,” he told her. “We’re on the Today Show.”

“At stupid o’clock in the morning, right?”

“I believe it’s at fuck-my-life AM, yes,” he grinned.

She laughed. He liked her laugh. It was real and resonating. 

“Nine,” he rectified. 

She nodded. “Sounds standard.”

“My life in a word.”

“Which word, nine?”

“Nah, standard. Everything’s always the same.”

“And then you have a concert tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, and an acoustic set on the radio after lunch.”

“Are you nervous?” The fangirl look was back. “Or have you just done so many that you’re like, ‘psh, no sweat, I  _ exhale _ shows’?”

Niall laughed, painfully aware of everything that he hated about his laughter- the nasally tone, the sharp loudness, how his accent could somehow be detected through it. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel that way,” he said, trying to ignore the list of flaws his brain was brandishing. “Even if we play a million shows. And sometimes it feels like we have.”

“How many have you guys done?”

“I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. A few thousand, surely. What counts as a show?”

Hayley shrugged. “Playing music to an audience.”

“But how much? And what counts as an audience? Cuz soundcheck could be a show with that definition.”

“I guess…” she struggled. “I dunno. I guess you just know when it’s a show. Do you?” She asked quickly, looking to confirm.

He smiled. “Yeah. There’s definitely a feeling when it’s a show.”

“Do you guys huddle together and do a group hug or something before the shows?”

They used to- sort of. Before every single show, Harry always threw up in the bathroom when the nerves got to be too much, and Louis would rub his back and speak kind words to him, Liam popping his head in to check on him when the retching stopped, Niall right behind him. The four of them would kneel on the floor and tell Harry that no matter what happened, the fans would love it, so there was nothing to worry about. Zayn would wander in late, flush the toilet, then sit on the lid with his phone in hand and read the tweets under that night’s hashtag out to them all, expertly picking the funniest questions and dares, which Louis would answer and attempt in the confined space. By the time Paul came in to bring them backstage for mic-up, they would have dissolved into laughter, and gone on stage in high spirits. 

Niall thought back to the last show they’d done, performing for the finale of some talent competition in France during April. Harry hadn’t even come into the green room before the show. Liam had been on the phone with Danielle until Paul came for them, Zayn had bitched with a crew member in the doorway about how they couldn’t get any alcohol before the show, and Niall had been chased around the room by Louis, who was trying to tackle him to take off his shoes and throw them from the second story window for the fun of it. When Niall had finally escaped from the room, he’d run off to hide in the chaos of the backstage, where the finalists were waiting anxiously, none of them in the right mind frame to coherently talk to a celebrity. When he eventually ducked into a bathroom to check that he hadn’t accidentally wiped off his make-up, he could hear Harry secretly puking in the solitude of the farthest stall.

Meanwhile in the present, Hayley was waiting for an answer. “Not really,” he mumbled. He bit down on the sandwich, trying to cover up the horrible taste the flashback had left in his mouth. He was aware of her examination again and he scowled. “This is starting to feel like an interview.”

“No more band stuff,” she decided firmly.

“No more band stuff,” he agreed.

“Tell me about you, then,” she said eagerly. “I mean, I pretty much know everything about you already-”

He laughed hollowly. “Do you?”

“You guys have always said that you’re the same on and off screen,” she said, but she sounded suddenly dubious. 

He put down his sandwich and rubbed at his eyes with the butt of his hands. “Christ on a bike,” he muttered.

“It’s not true?”

He couldn’t identify her tone. “No,” he said almost coldly. “Like, at all. It used to be true, but then management wouldn’t let us change on screen when we started changing in real life. We fit in nice little boxes that everyone knew so well. They thought if we shifted out of the boxes, the fans would get confused and leave, or some ridiculous bullshit like that.”

She examined him with guarded eyes this time, weighing his words. “So how are you different off-screen?” she asked.

Niall hesitated, not wanting to really get into all of it, because there was  _ so much  _ to cover, and he felt responsible for keeping the band’s secrets. Spilling the bones of the scariest skeletons in the deepest, darkest closets of the One Direction world would be breaking a bro code of the highest order, the unspoken trust every group had. A sort of “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” understanding between guys who share the same living space for any amount of time. 

He started off, meaning to keep it brief and succinct, but something about the empathy in her gaze and the reliable set of her mouth cracked him. She  _ cared _ about him. Really and truly and actually. She would really  _ listen _ to whatever he said because she cared and wanted to help him. She held a genuine desire to make him happy, and it was that very fact coupled with the fact that he was so  _ un _ happy that took him from, “Just like, you know, some taste differences here and there” to expounding on everything that had happened in the last year and everything that made Niall hate his life. 

He told her all of it: Louis and Zayn’s increasing violence; Zayn’s temper and general nastiness; Harry and Louis’s failing bromance; his and Liam’s fading friendship. 

The lies between them all. 

The war with management. 

The emotional shut down and withdrawal into themselves. 

The manwhoreing and the alcoholism and the troublemaking and the denial. 

He told her about the last show, and about how it used to be. He told her about Louis waking him up last night trying to prank Liam. He told her about the car ride to Rockefeller Plaza and the failure at sound check and the fight in the green room. He told her – shamefacedly, head buried in his palms – about running away for a couple of hours because he couldn’t take it anymore, and how it made him happier than anything he had ever done in his life. He told her everything, right to the very minute they were sitting there at the table. Then there was a long silence.

He lifted his face from his hands to look at her and immediately wished he hadn’t. Her eyes were on the table, and she looked on the edge of breaking composure. Crestfallen. That was a word, right? Cuz she sure looked it. Like they’d cancelled Christmas on Christmas Eve.

Her voice faltered when she asked, “So you’re not-”

“No,” Niall interrupted, because that was the answer to anything she was about to ask.

She met his eyes. Crestfallen  _ had _ to be a word. “Are  _ any  _ of you…?”

He shook his head. “I’m so fucking sick of red,” he said, like that was an adequate explanation for all the questions he wasn’t letting her finish. And it must have been, because he could see all the gears click into place. She deflated, gaze falling back to the table.

“Wow,” she breathed faintly. 

It struck Niall that he had pretty much just shattered an entire part of her universe. Everything that she believed about her favorite band had just been verified as a carefully constructed illusion. He was actually surprised she hadn’t passed out or started crying, since that’s all fangirls seemed to do when their ‘feels’ climaxed. This must have been a serious shock to her system. He felt guilty again. She could sit here and make him feel so much better, so how come all he could do was upset her?

He wrapped a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face up to say something that might soften the blow. He was suddenly hungry with the desire to kiss her –  _ hard _ – but he fought it down and tried to look gentle and repentant.

“I didn’t mean to-”

He was cut off by her leaning in and pressing her lips to him with similar force to how he’d wanted to. He pressed back unthinkingly, fanning his fingers out against the side of her face, moving his hand up to cradle her jaw in his palm. She raised up and pushed her soft magenta lips back harder against his rough peach ones, and he  _ freaking whined _ . 

As if the sound was an alarm, she jerked away and dropped back into her seat, looking shaken. He was frozen in place, heart beating erratically, eyes, he could feel, wide and wild. 

“Breathe,” she said, and he couldn’t figure out if she was reminding him or herself, but he gasped in a forgotten breath and his lungs trembled with the effort. He sank back onto the stool and their eyes connected, an intense current of emotion bolting between them. They both twitched, but neither broke the connection.

“Sorry not sorry?” he eventually heard himself say.

She exhaled in a puff, and it might have been a laugh. “Pretty much.”

They became trapped in their shared gaze again, stuck for a minute that could have lasted forever without complaint, before Niall, stupidly, directed the conversation back into place by saying, “No more band stuff.”

“Is that what happens if we talk band stuff?”

That was not at all what he had expected her to say. He double took and stammered, “I… I don’t… no, it’s not. That was… just…” There was no way to explain what it was, and Niall’s brain replaced his disjointed words with  _ oh fuck it  _ and decided a reenactment was the best way to explain. He leaned across the table and crashed their mouths together again. Her fingers immediately found their way into his hair on both sides of his face, and he opened his mouth. She opened hers in reaction and sucked his tongue into her mouth. 

She tasted sweet, and he braced both hands on the table because everything was spinning and there was a good chance he was just going to fall into her. From the way she was kissing him, though, she probably wouldn’t have minded in the least. 

Niall hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time, and he hadn’t kissed anyone like he was kissing Hayley now in  _ years _ . He definitely couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this strongly about someone, let alone someone he had just met. He was totally content to die right in that moment, because he couldn’t think back to a time when he had felt this incredible and he had a hard time imagining he ever would again. Was  _ agravic _ a word? How about  _ holyfuckballs _ ? Surely that was a word, because it was the only thing going through his head.

He was ready to propel himself over the table and into her lap when Mike clapped his hands loudly and yelled, “Hey!”

They jerked back, panting, but Hayley didn’t release his face. Mike had his arms crossed across his chest, trying and failing to look stern. 

“Get the Hell off the table, Niall,” he scolded, battling a smile at the edges of his mouth. “What, do they raise you by wolves in Ireland?”

Niall howled reflexively and Hayley laughed brightly. Niall looked at her in awe, wondering how he had woken up this morning without even knowing she existed.

Mike shook his head, but it was clear he was pleased. “Keep it in your pants, keep your pants in the seat,” he grunted.

“Yes, sir.” Hayley took her hands off Niall’s head and he sat down. She grinned at him. “No more band stuff.”

He grinned back. “If you insist.” 


	4. Speed Dating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of angst and fluff in this chapter. TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of cutting. This chapter used to end with smut, but it was godawful, so i cut it. May add it back later as a bonus chapter or something.

It was nearly three when – with a cautionary, double-meaninged “Take care” from Mike – they giddily stumbled out of the shop.

Niall threw an arm around Hayley’s shoulder and swooped down to kiss her, but instead, she shoved the baseball cap Mike had found in the backroom on his head. They figured it would help Niall stay invisible on the streets – he’d opted out of putting the hoodie back on too, tossing it in the trash along with the wrapping paper from their sandwiches. He reached up to adjust the cap so that it fit him. Hayley watched, her smile fond. It made Niall feel special, something child-like spreading up the back of his throat, and he smiled widely.

“What?” he asked.

Her smile didn’t change at all. “Nothing,” she reassured him sweetly. She inhaled through her nose and seemed to shake herself out before saying, “Welp, good luck with everyone when you get back, because you are  _ definitely _ going to need it.” She held out a hand. “It was absolutely  _ wonderful _ meeting you, Niall.” There was nothing but sincerity in her tone and expression, and Niall felt the breath drag out of him. He looked down at her hand.

“Yeah,” he said stupidly. He wasn’t really thinking straight, preoccupied with not wanting to go back and not wanting to leave Hayley. There was a very obvious solution to both of these problems. He looked up from her hand and asked, “Are you free?” 

It seemed to be the very question she wanted to hear, but the one question she didn’t know how to answer. She finally settled on, “When? Tonight?”

“Now.”

Her face crinkled in surprise. “ _ Now? _ ”

“Yes. Now. Right now.”

Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly. Niall watched, wanting to kiss her.

“You have to get back for soundcheck,” she breathed when he eventually pulled his mouth away from hers.

“They can do soundcheck without me.”

“And you have a radio interview later.”

“There are four of them. They can handle an interview.”

“I have work in an hour.”

“Call out sick.”

“I can’t just  _ call out _ of work-”

“Yes, you can. You’re dizzy and you feel like you’re gonna throw up.”

“Except that I  _ don’t _ .”

He cradled her face, tipped back her head, and kissed her with everything he had.

“How about now?” he questioned seductively, voice velvety and lips brushing against hers with each word.

“Who are you again?” She panted, sounding dazed.

“Why are you fighting this?” he demanded. 

“I’m not.”

“Then stay with me.”

She was still staring up at him, unconvinced. 

“I’ll give you that picture you wanted,” he bargained. 

It was such a ridiculous trade, given that five seconds ago he’d had his tongue down her throat and was exuding pure passion, that she laughed out loud. He permitted himself a grin. Bravo for being clever. 

“I do want that picture,” she hummed, reaching up to stroke his shadowy cheek. His eyes drifted shut and he sighed contentedly. 

He couldn’t begin to say where this flirtatious, cheeky, bold person had come from. Niall was not a passionate, demanding, strong-willed person. Niall was a behaved, quiet, frequently guilty person, the kind of person who would have smiled and taken a picture with Hayley in the sandwich shop, before crawling back to the Plaza, feeling sick with guilt and apologizing to everyone, promising to never run off again and worry them. Whatever this feeling Hayley was causing inside him… it was like swallowing a superman pill or something. He felt just short of invincible, like he could do absolutely anything as long as those hazel eyes were staring at him with that transparent empathy. As long as her heart still wanted to fuel his strength. 

“Then let’s go.” If she said yes, he could go ten rounds with King Kong.

She inspected him thoroughly, looking for some ulterior motive or hidden agenda or some form of reason  _ why _ Niall Horan of all people wanted to spend his precious time with  _ her _ .

“I’m really happy right now,” he word-vomited before he could stop himself.

And for once, Niall was really glad that he wore his heart on his sleeve, because it was so evident how much he meant what he said that Hayley’s face broke into the biggest smile he’d seen on her yet.

“Where are we going?” she queried. 

Niall let out a triumphant whoop and spun her around, kissing her hard when he put her back on the ground.

“Calm down,” she admonished, but he really didn’t care because she wouldn’t stop smiling, and that was so okay with him.

“Where do you  _ want  _ to go?” he asked. He gripped her hand in his, fingers sliding into the spaces hers left behind.

“You tell me. I’m pretty much okay with anywhere.”

They started walking North on Broadway towards Columbus Circle. “The park?” he suggested, since that was in the direction they were heading.

She pursed her lips. “School’s out by now,” she reminded him. “And it’s a beautiful day.”

“Yeah it is.” He was looking at her in a way that left no question as to what he was calling beautiful. She looked back at him and smiled dopily. 

“So everyone who could recognize you is probably in the park,” she elucidated.

He flicked the lid of his hat, which was covering the majority of his face in shadow. “They’ll never notice. I don’t think I’ve worn a baseball cap since I was twelve.”

She squinted in thought. “Even so.” She stopped to dig around in her bag, extracting a large pair of silver aviators and passing them to him.

“They know me in sunglasses,” he objected. Hood up and sunglasses on was his default public disguise. 

“But not sunglasses and a hat,” she insisted, reaching up to put them on his face. “Look at that. I barely recognize you.”

He blinked, eyes adjusting to the tint. “Doesn’t that look suspicious, me all bundled up and you exposed?”

She reached in and pulled another pair from her bag. “Always good to have a back-up.” 

Hayley started walking again, dragging him down the road with her. He skipped to catch up, giving her a playful tug into his arm. She bumped it and stumbled slightly, then straightened and bumped into it deliberately. He grinned, she grinned, and he threw an arm around her shoulder the same time she wrapped hers around his waist. Her hand wound to rest with her fingertips just left of his navel. He made a contented sound. 

They stepped in synchronization, their strides mostly the same length, and it felt right. He glanced down; she was staring ahead, the smile on her face mirroring the way his felt. His insecurities came rushing back from nowhere, and he suddenly felt the smile slip from his face as he thought – no,  _ knew _ – that there was no way she could look that happy just because of him. 

“So who are you pretending I am?” he asked, unsuccessful in keeping the melancholy from his voice. 

Her smile vanished and she tilted her head to look at him. He couldn’t see her eyes because of the reflectiveness of her glasses. “What do you mean?”

“Well, this is every fangirl’s dream, isn’t it? Win an afternoon with your favorite member of One Direction. I’m pretty sure we actually did that once with  _ Seventeen Magazine. _ ”

“Yeah, you did. I didn’t win.” The smile was back. “Then.”

He decided it didn’t matter what was making her smile like that: he could pretend it was him and that would be enough. They were quiet again, but curiosity and jealousy were nibbling away at the corners of his own smile, and he had to ask again, “So who are you pretending I am?”

She frowned again. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it, to ask,  _ which of my bandmates are you replacing me with in your head? _ instead asking, “Who’s your favorite One Direction member?”

“A real Directioner doesn’t have a favorite member,” she intoned with script-like practice. “We love all five boys equally.”

Clearly this was untrue. He had never met a Directioner who didn’t have a favorite (usually Harry), and the way she was reciting the mantra lent it even less validity. He raised a disbelieving eyebrow, wondering if she could see it under his disguise.

She definitely could, because she fought a grin and looked away. “If we  _ did  _ have favorites, mine would probably be that Niall guy. He’s pretty cute.”

Niall chuckled. “And if I wasn’t standing here holding your hand, who would your favorite be?”

“Still you.”

He scoffed. “I’m serious.”

Her eyebrows drew together. “Yeah. So am I.”

Niall felt a prick of vexation. “I’m not anyone’s favorite,” he said with certainty. And he wasn’t. His dolls and keychains and tshirts had always sold the least of everyone’s, the sales figures suggesting that people only bought his when they were trying to collect the whole band.

Hayley waved a hand dismissively. “Maybe there are only, like, six of us in the whole world, but that just means there’s more of you to go around.” She grinned, but Niall didn’t find solace in the joke. She stopped and put a hand on his face. “You’ve always been my favorite,” she assured him in that sincere tone of hers. “Ever since I first saw you guys, I’ve liked you the best.”

Niall remembered his lanky, dirty pubescence, greasy hair and crookedly spaced-out teeth and acne riddled skin when the band first started out, and found it hard to believe anyone could prefer that over Liam’s perfect fringe or Louis’s blue eyes or Zayn’s flawless skin or Harry’s dimples. “When was that?”

“When I first found you guys?”

“Yeah.” They’d been a UK band on a UK TV show, and by the time One Direction had hit manic mainstream here in the US almost two years later, They’d been a group of attractive, fashionable, and established pop icons. If Hayley had found Niall after his growth spurt had finished and after a few haircuts and braces, it would still be hard to believe he was her favorite, but it seemed slightly more realistic. 

“I found you guys on X-Factor.”

He shook his head. “Americans don’t watch X-Factor.”

“I’ve watched X-Factor every year since I was a freshman in high school,” she told him, and he wracked his brain to give him an age on the timeline for “freshman in high school”. America’s education system was weird. Was high school secondary level education? “My family hosted and Exchange student from Scotland and she and I watch it on live stream every week. She and I stayed in touch by continuing to watch every new season and skype about it. Your season was by far the best, because the competition from  _ all _ the acts was great! I loved you guys. It’s a great underdog story.”

He hated when people referred to their journey as one of an underdog. “We didn’t win.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said, indicating the disguise he needed to wear because he couldn’t be seen in public without frenzy.

“And I was your favorite?” Pretty, smiley, flirty Harry; hot, brotherly, athletic Liam; sexy, shy, talented Zayn; cute, bold, funny Louis; awkward, confused, clumsy Niall. That’s what they had been back then. He was always off in his own world, doing whatever he could to fit in, and laughing too much. He’d had none of the other boys’ confidence, and even though Zayn hadn’t been confident in the beginning either, he was undoubtedly the best vocalist in the entire competition that he didn’t need it. Niall had been an average singer back then; he always suspected that the only reason they put him in the band was because they needed a blonde and he was the right age. 

Hayley smiled delicately, like she was remembering something that was tender to her. “You were so sweet,” she murmured, staring at her feet self-consciously. “You were uncomfortable in your own skin and you were always trying so hard to be liked by the others. It was endearing. You were a lot like me, and I could always see through you.” She looked up at him. “And you were always laughing these good hard laughs, like in spite of how hard you always had to try, the world was still something that could sneak up and surprise you with a good mood.”

He stared down at her. “You pretty much just said you loved everything I hated about myself.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” she mused. Then she sighed. “You know, it’s funny, cuz I started molding myself after you. I told myself to always be positive and find every silver lining no matter what, and always smile because I was alive and the world was such a beautiful place. I was always happy after that, and I made other people happy, and that let me find my inner strength.”

“Why is that funny?” he prompted when she fell quiet.

“Acting like you made me happy and confident.” She laughed. “When you were anything but.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I guess that is funny.”

She inspected what little she could see of his face. “No, it’s not,” she said quietly.

He tried to scrutinize her in the same way, but he couldn’t read her the way she could read him. All he saw was a small face and big sunglasses. “You know,” he said, “you mentioned that you were like me, but you remind me a  _ lot _ of Liam.”

She smiled condescendingly. “You and Liam are more alike than you realize.”

“So basically if I was less angsty, we’d be the same person?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. It’s a possibility.”

They stopped at the head of Columbus circle and watched the traffic swirl around, crisscrossing each other at the senseless intersection. This area always stressed Niall out for some silly reason he didn’t understand, and he let Hayley pull out from under him and lead them to a crosswalk. He gripped her hand out of fear they would get separated, but she kept glancing over her shoulder to make sure he was still there, even as they crossed the street. 

It wasn’t until they entered the park, and a pair of teenage girls pushed past them that Niall became shockingly aware of the absence of his bodyguards. He was suddenly seeing only the ladies in the park and hearing every giggle like it was amplified a hundredfold. He balked. Hayley was watching him cautiously.

“We don’t have to go in,” she said evenly. For a moment, it occurred to Niall that  _ she _ was a girl, too, and he half jumped back from her before he got a hold of himself. 

“Shouldn’t you be telling me it’ll be fine?” he demanded shakily. He needed someone to reassure him, or he would never snap out of this fog and he wouldn’t be able to take another step.

“I don’t know that it will be,” she said honestly. Niall kept staring at her and wished he could see her eyes.

What the fuck was he thinking, going into one of the most crowded, open, public places in the city with no protection? Fangirls had freaking  _ x-ray vision _ – there was no way a hat and sunglasses would stop them recognizing him! Most of the park goers were there  _ to people-watch _ , for god’s sake! He was about to drag poor Hayley onto a battlefield, and there she was, trusting his judgment. He mentally kicked himself.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” he decided, and she looked relieved. 

“Yes, please.” 

They made their way back to the crosswalk, Niall’s worry dissipating the further they walked. 

“Where did you have in mind?” She asked, trying to figure out a route they could take.

The light changed to the walking man before he could think of something, and she looked up in expectation.

“You know any good smoothie places?” he asked, recalling his craving from before their interview on Taylor’s Playhouse. The light started to blink that time was running out, and Hayley dashed across the street, pulling Niall behind her. They landed on the other side just as the clock hit zero and the hand stilled. 

“Yes,” she said hesitantly. 

“What?” he pressed. 

“It’s in a crowded place.” She bit her lip in thought. “But it’s not like the park. No one is paying attention to anything but themselves and they’re all in a hurry.”

He frowned. “Where is it?”

“Penn Station.”

“That’s on the other side of Times Square, right?”

“Yeah, under Madison Square Garden.”

One Direction had sold Madison Square Garden out a few times. He knew where it was. “I don’t know if I like the idea of walking through Times Square. That’s the same problem as the park.”

“So we’ll go off Broadway, get down Madison, and go around Times Square. We can cross back on Thirty-Second, walk down to Eighth Avenue, and take the back way in just to be safe.”

“I didn’t understand a word of that.”

She laughed. “Sorry. I forgot you don’t speak city directions.”

“Well, I’m fairly certain  _ you _ don’t either, because that made no sense. We could just go down the Avenue of the Americas and it would take less time.”

She smiled condescendingly. “But that takes us by Bryant Park. If we follow Fifty- Ninth to Madison, we make a bigger arc and avoid the more tourist-y areas by a wider margin.”

He smiled back. “If we wanted to take Fifty- Ninth, we shouldn’t have crossed the street.”

She scowled and dragged him back to the crosswalk. “Shut up, you.”

They walked down fifty-ninth, skirting the boundary of the park close enough to make Niall uneasy, but Hayley ducked and moved to stand on his other side so that Niall was closer to the cars than he was to the casual observers on the grass. 

They spent the time talking about Hayley’s life, which she seemed reluctant to share, prefacing some of her answers with reminders that her life was not very exciting. Niall liked her simple-sounding life. She lived with her aunt, who was some big-shot sales executive and was always out of the country for work, so it felt like she was living by herself. 

N iall listened covetously to the way she talked about her daily routine. She woke up, showered, finished homework in the apartment, went to classes, started the new homework over lunch in Mike’s shop, went to her job, and stumbled home late, usually passing out on the bed without changing out of her clothes while listening to a rerun of some movie on TV. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she had work first, then classes. On the weekend, she experimented with new recipe ideas and watched foreign action movies on Netflix. Sometimes she’d go to Penn Station for a smoothie and walk to Times Square to people-watch. 

It sounded so easy, so uncomplicated, and he thought she was crazy for being envious of  _ his _ life when hers sounded so perfect.

Neither of them had considered the proximity their route brought them to Rockefeller Center, and they wound around the side streets between Park and Lexington in a perplexing shape to avoid it. Niall couldn’t let himself breathe until they were several blocks south. Hayley rubbed soothing circles into the back of his hand with her thumb as she talked until she felt him relax.

The man in the smoothie place greeted Hayley by name and started putting together her order before she placed it. Niall took forever to pick a smoothie – America just had too many  _ options _ – eventually just settling on, “I’ll have whatever she’s having.”

It was good, a melon-berry type flavor with a citrus-y zip behind it, and he sucked it down too fast and too thirsty. Even laughing at his brain freeze, Hayley made him smile, especially when she reached her fingers to his temples to massage it out. 

They were sitting at the top of some stairs, in a corner that was out of the way of prying eyes and hurried pedestrians, but even the ones they saw didn’t spare them even a glance as they dashed by, and that was fine with Niall. It was fascinating that he could be in such a busy place and no one even noticed him. He felt anonymous. He knew Hayley hated that feeling, but it was so outlandish to him and he absolutely loved it. 

And love was a weird word, wasn’t it? Because he sat there, loving the feeling of being a nobody, and loving the feeling of being not alone for the first day in forever– but more than that, he was loving the feeling of being with  _ Hayley _ , loving the authenticity of her smile, and the frankness of her words. He loved the rapt attention she looked at him with, and he loved the way her body shifted and her face reacted to what he said. He loved feeling like she legitimately cared about him as _ him _ , not in a way of stranger pity for a poor Irish boy or shallow desire for a celebrity crush, but like she wanted to hear about what Niall, quiet young stranger with a muddled accent and under-construction smile and bleached blonde hair, had to say. 

He loved feeling like maybe she loved him. And maybe it was stupid and sappy, but he loved feeling like maybe he loved her, too. She was the first person in his life aside from Liam that he felt so connected to.

They descended around seven to find food, and brought up some pizza slices from a place next to the smoothie stand. Hayley excused herself with a swear after a few bites to call her job and profusely apologize for not coming in. She came back looking relieved and said they bought whatever nonsense she had fed them without getting in trouble, so Niall grinned, glad he hadn’t cost her the job. 

They moved on from talking about their lives in general and started talking about things they liked and disliked. They had the same favorite season (Summer), but she teased him about how his favorite color (silver) wasn’t a real color at all. Her favorite color was red, and he suspected by the way she blushed when she admitted it that his wardrobe was responsible for the taste. They had essentially the same taste in music, which was to be expected, but still made him smile. Neither of them were naturally blonde. She dreamed of someday getting to Paris; he dreamed of someday never having to go back. Her ultimate goal was to work as head chef at a classy restaurant uptown once she finished her masters in Gastronomy, and he was forced to admit that he really didn’t have an ultimate goal.

“Makes sense,” she told him. “You’re already doing what you always wanted.”

“Hm,” he answered vaguely.

She backed off of the question without further persuasion; she had gotten good at knowing which inflections of his warned of subject matter off-limits: as much as he told her, there was still a lot he kept in his head, secrets no one knew about him, and he wanted to keep it that way. He’d been locked inside himself for too long to so easily let someone else in. As much as he loved the hand she was reaching out to him, a part of him was scared to take it and pull her in– or, scarier yet, pull himself out. 

He heard a metallic clang hours later and they both jumped, Hayley mid-sentence. Niall laughed at the small “Oh!” she squeaked out, and she hit him lightheartedly on the arm. 

“What was that?” she asked, leaning to look through the slats of the railing.

“Dunno.” He stretched out, his joints popping pleasantly out of place. He made a sound somewhere between a growl and yawn before he hoisted himself up and looked over the side. The man from the smoothie counter was on his knees, locking the gate at the front of the shop in place. A couple of the places to the left of his were dark and bolted up, too. 

“What time is it?” Niall asked in surprise. 

“Holy shit,” Hayley stated. Niall swiveled his head to look at her. She held up her phone screen for him to see. “Ten-oh-seven.”

He squinted at the glowing white numbers. “Holy shit,” he agreed. She got to her feet and shook herself out. They locked eyes, and she reached out to spin his hat around backwards, seeing him clearly and well-lit for the first time since lunch. 

Something about her exposing him was dangerous, but in a way that made warmth pulse up from his toes. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and embraced her close to his body, kissing her on the head. She wound both of her arms around his waist and he used his loose arm to lift her face out of where she was nuzzling into his shirt. 

His heart seemed to stop for a moment as they looked at each other, the understanding passing between them that the day was almost over. Only two hours until tomorrow, two hours until she went back to work and classes, and he went back to performance after performance. Two hours until they had to pick up their lives right where they left them. 

“Can you kiss me again?” she whispered. 

He laughed breathlessly, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers, and murmured, “ _ Oui _ ,” against her lips before he applied pressure.

It was long, tame, and sweet. Overwhelming affection came out of their lungs and met at the spot where their lips separated and they inhaled each other desperately. She pulled away when Niall whined involuntarily  _ again _ , and he whined once more in protest.

“Wow, in French. I must be pretty special,” she murmured with a smile.

“That’s an understatement,” he told her, and the second her eyes flitted down from his eyes to his lips, he launched in and connected them with hers again. Hayley dug her fingers into his back, clinging to Niall like she was trying to fuse the two of them together. All Niall could think was how he would die if she loosened her grip. 

Love was a weird word, wasn’t it?

“A’ight, let’s keep it movin’,” a brusque voice grunted from behind them. They pulled apart to see a large police officer shooing them away with his hands. “None of that in here,” he said. “Take it outside.”

Niall’s face was a few shades darker than “fire truck”. Hayley had the good sense to spin his hat back into place before she grabbed his hand, called, “sorry!” to the officer, and pulled him down the stairs, embarrassed. She slowed to an inconspicuous pace when they reached the dwindling crowd of passengers. She took him the opposite way they’d come in and led him up the stairs.

The night was muggy and hot, the ubiquitous island breeze providing little relief from the sticky humidity of the greenhouse effect. Niall felt the moisture immediately tack to the back of his neck. 

Hayley tucked her bangs back behind her ears and looked up Seventh Avenue. “Okay,” she pointed. “Right there is where you can stand to get a taxi. It’s not a long wait this late on a Monday. Just tell him where you’re going.”

Niall looked down at her, eyes heavy and mouth turned down. He didn’t want to go back to face everyone yet. It didn’t seem fair that the day would start  _ and _ end awfully. And he definitely didn’t want to leave Hayley yet. 

She misread his face for once, possibly sidetracked by whatever thoughts were plaguing her own expression. “Do you not know where you’re staying?”

It would have been easier to lie. “No, I know the hotel.”

She picked up on more of his implicit thoughts. “You’re sharing a room with Liam?”

“Dammit,” he groaned. He’d forgotten all about that.

“It’ll be better to lose some weird respect from Louis and Zayn than to lose Liam’s friendship,” she advised. “You know he’ll forgive you when you apologize.”

He knew. But that wasn’t the whole problem. She could see that. 

“Maybe you should explain to them all  _ why _ you left?” she suggested. “That might quell some of their anger.”

He laughed gravely. “I’ve had them worried sick all day. Nothing’s gonna quell their anger.”

“They can’t’ve been all that worried,” she pointed out sourly. “Your phone hasn’t gone off once.”

He pulled it out of his pocket and held the power button until the start-up screen came on. “I turned it off before I got to Mike’s,” he told her. “I forgot all about it.”

His phone seized in his hand, buzzing pugnaciously as it retrieved all the notifications from the day. He groaned, fighting the impulse to just shut off the phone again and not deal with any of it. It would be useless, because he’d have to deal with all of it and more when he eventually turned it back on. She glowered at his phone. He looked at her until she met his pleading gaze. 

“How about I wait in line with you?” she offered. 

It was no good. The one time he wanted her to read his mind was the one time she couldn’t. “Can I just come back to your place?”

A wild procession of emotions whipped across her face, finally landing on disappointment, which he didn’t understand right away. The longer she looked at him, the faster he understood: she thought the whole day had been a set-up.

“Not to fuck you or anything!” he blurted, and they both flinched. “I mean! No! No, no, no, I just…shit…”

He could tell that she knew exactly what he was trying to say, but she wanted to hear it. He squirmed.

“I’ll sleep on the couch or the floor or something. I just…”  _ Spit it out. _ “I just don’t want to…”  _ leave you yet. _ “I just don’t want to go back yet.”  _ You damn coward, _ he berated himself.

She absorbed this with a thoughtful look, searching him with her eyes in that way he both loved and hated.  _ You know I’m a shit liar, _ he wanted to say, but he stayed quiet and let her mull it over without disruption. 

“You can sleep on the couch,” she said at last. It was firm, but a concession. His smile was almost too big to be proper. 

“Thank you,” he professed sincerely. She didn’t smile back.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “We don’t need a taxi. It’s not a long walk and all I’ve done today is eat.”

She took off down seventh, away from the brightly lit area of the island toward the village, motioning behind her with one hand for him to follow. He reached out and snagged her fingertips, skipping to catch up and squeezing lightly. She kept her eyes forward determinedly, but squeezed back and shifted her hand to fit more comfortably in his. 

“Where are we going?” he asked, realizing he had no idea where she lived. 

“Chelsea. Like I said, it’s not far.”

They crossed at the next crosswalk and stayed quiet for the rest of the walk. Niall was confused and kind of turned on by the electric tension in the air, but he wasn’t sure what it was, and he couldn’t decipher the war waging behind Hayley’s visage. Visage was a word, right? Visage sounded like fishes. What would fishes fight a war over? They seemed too stupid to really fight over anything. 

Underwater politics kept him engrossed within his own head for most of the walk, and he didn’t hear Hayley when she spoke to him. He would have missed it completely if she hadn’t looked at him in expectation.

“Say again?” He asked, flushing.

She smiled a fangirl smile. Silly Niall and his daydreaming. “I said it’s at the end of this block.”

It was a nice building, five or six floors up, old and artsy-looking. She fished –  _ ha! _ – a jingly set of keys from the bottom of her bag and turned it in the lock, tapping the door open with minimal effort. It drifted to allow them in without so much as a creak. The hallway inside was sweltering with the heat, air stiff. 

“It’s like a sauna in here,” he stated as she locked the door behind him. The building was quiet and the stairwell was lit dimly. The staircase was made of darkly painted wood and an intricately carved banister. Ancient wallpaper dribbled down the wall.

“It gets nicer as you go up,” she promised. “We’re floor six.”

“Six?” he groaned in disbelief, wiping sweat from his temple already. 

“There’s central air. You’ll be fine once we get inside.”

The stairs were the loud, creaky kind, but magically seemed to firm up with every floor. The walls went from stained, crumbling wall paper to immaculate white paint, the doors turning from cheap flakey wood painted with white numbers to high-quality plastic-coated wood embedded with brass numbers. At the very top of the stairs was a single door. Hayley stuck another key into the lock, brushing sweat soaked hair out of her eyes. 

“It’s a little cramped,” she warned. She pushed the door open and fought with it for the key. She flicked a switch in the corner and the whole thing lit up. 

The entire level had been made into a sprawling studio apartment. The floor was glossy pale wood, and the walls were white. The light fixtures and furniture and appliances were shiny silver. A huge flat screen TV hung high on the wall, looking at a semi-circle of a couch and three armchairs, two that matched the sofa and one old worn one that looked like it had once been a member of a set that only existed now in a fond memory. A glass-and-chrome coffee table sat in the middle. 

There was a kitchen space carved out of the corner directly to their left, the only thing separating it from the rest of the apartment was a tile floor instead of wood. In the two corners that were diagonal from each other, two queen beds and dressers sat on raised platforms, white mesh curtains hanging around them like walls. The far wall stopped halfway up and became a window that spanned the length, revealing a breathtaking view of the bright city and the water beyond. 

Hayley had been right in calling it cramped. There wasn’t much open space, and what little there was had been littered with debris of everyday life: clothes, papers, various household objects that had been cast aside in haste. You could tell someone lived here. Niall thought of his own apartment back in London, and how there was never a sign of occupation. When was the last time he’d spent the night at ‘home’?

Hayley kicked her shoes off haphazardly into the blissfully cool apartment and went straight into the kitchen, filling a pot with water from the sink and placing it on the stove on low heat.

“What’s that for?” He asked, closing the door and kicking his own shoes off the way she had. It made him smile, feeling like it was something he could get used to: arriving home with Hayley every night. He followed her into the kitchen and she turned to smile at him.

“I know Harry and Louis are big on tea,” she said with a shrug. “Figured it’s good to have water boiling. Just in case you are, too.”

He laughed. “You don’t remember my tea preferences from interviews?” he teased.

She grinned. “You want some water?” she asked, opening the fridge. 

“God, yes.” She tossed him a water bottle, and he slurped it down greedily. 

“Relax,” she advised, sipping at her own. “If you drink too fast when you’re dehydrated, you’ll puke. And I’m not cleaning it up.”

He gasped down air, trying to even his breathing before he chugged the rest of the bottle. “All you people do is tell me to slow down,” he thought out loud, remembering she and Mike reprimanding him earlier in the day about the fries and smoothie.

She tensed up, visibly stressing over his words. Niall didn’t see anything to stress about, but he figured she was six thoughts ahead of him, and he wasn’t going to ask what was making her uncomfortable, because she probably wouldn’t answer anyway. He wandered across the room to the window and stared out, standing beside her bed (he was assuming it was hers, because there was magazine cutout of One Direction among the other photos pinned to one of the curtain-walls).

It wasn’t a bad view, but he’d definitely had better views of New York City. This was nothing special. It was sad: he never would have imagined that he’d become jaded to this kind of view. He dreamed about views like this when he was a kid. 

“Pretty, huh?” Hayley had slunk up to stand beside him. He looked over at her, seeing how young and bright her eyes shone, staring out the window. She saw this view every night and she still regarded it with such wonder. He envied her. When had he become so calloused? 

“Yeah.” His voice cracked. Her eyes were glittering, reflecting everything enchanting about the city beyond the glass. “Beautiful.”

She looked up at him, dazzling and beguiling and so  _ goddamn lovely, _ and something in him shattered.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he whispered. Her face stayed exactly the same, and he was worried she might not have understood his ambiguous confession. 

“I know,” she whispered back. She reached out tentatively to rest her palm against his cheek, and he leaned into it, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. “It’s okay.”

His laugh came out tangled in a sob. “It’s not.” He opened his eyes, the room swimming in tears. “But I’m not, either. And I can’t take it much longer.”

He searched her face, looking for the fangirl part of her that was surely in straits at the knowledge that he wanted to leave the band. He couldn’t find the fangirl part. All he saw was the girl on the street flipping over the pennies, a girl who wanted to give everyone the opportunity to be happy. Then he saw the girl in front of him, the one from the train station who wanted  _ him _ to be happy. Who  _ loved _ him, and would still love him, even if he left the band, because he would be happy. Because she understood him. 

“I’ve been cutting, you know.” The words fled his mouth like a jailbreak. “Our first couple of years in the band were great. But I just always felt out of place and… like I didn’t belong. Like I still don’t. And it’s only been getting worse since we resigned with management and the label 18 months ago. All they tell me is how I’m the least popular band member and how I have to do this or that because I’m not attractive enough. I don’t want to dye my hair anymore and I don’t want to be on a diet or work out all the time. I stopped eating for a while last year, but there was no point because no one noticed and I was so exhausted all the time. So I just started cutting. Just my thighs so no one will notice, but it’s killing me a little that no one notices. That no one asks. Cuz they all have their own shit, and I get that, but I’m falling apart and no one seems to fucking care.” 

He paused, wincing at his verbal vomit. This was the most vulnerable he had ever been, and he was worried that he had made a mistake in revealing such deeply personal information to someone who was essentially a stranger. This was the first time he had ever felt safe enough to share it, the first time he had ever trusted someone enough, but for all he knew, she could email Buzzfeed or TMZ as soon as he fell asleep. 

Hayley was frowning, but only slightly, not like she was upset, but like she was mulling over the confession. 

“And I really, really fucking hate wearing red outfits,” he added as an afterthought. 

There was pain now on her face, too. “When you say they have their own shit…?” She asked after it had been quiet far too long.

“Liam’s basically dissociating because he misses Danielle so much. Zayn is practically a ghost because he’s never around unless he has to be and when he is, he’s just taking it out on everyone, usually me because he knows I won’t fight back. And Harry and Lou don’t even talk to each other anymore if the cameras aren’t rolling. Louis takes that out on everyone, but usually me, too.” It was unsettling how casually he can say all of it, like it doesn’t bother him when really, it’s eating him from the inside out.

“What do you mean, they take it out on you?” Her frown was fierce and concerned.

“It’s a lot of pressure,” he whispered. He was struck by a sudden instinct to protect his bandmates, to defend them for what they’d done to him.

“Niall.”

“Pranks from Louis, but they’re really mean and make me feel awful. From Zayn, it’s just… physical stuff. Screaming. Breaking shit to scare everyone into leaving him alone. Harry gets physical like that sometimes, too. And Zayn and Louis are like always hitting each other.” He sniffled through tears again. Trying to suppress all the memories just makes them flood back harder, it seemed. 

Hayley’s thumb wiped gently under Niall’s eye, and he closed them again.

“Breathe,” she encouraged. He inhaled shakily, and completely lost it. He sobbed uncontrollably, and Hayley reeled him into the shelter of her arms. He nuzzled his face against her neck, soaking her skin with snot and tears and god-knows-what-else as he cried. She rubbed his back and rocked them imperceptibly. “Shhh,” she soothed. 

She let him stand and cry long and hard. Every time he thought he was done, he’d think of something else and a fresh sob-tsunami would crash down and flood the shore. Everything he’d wanted to cry about since the X-Factor days circled around him, slapping him in the face as it spun past and overwhelmed him and stole the breath from his chest, his heart thumping erratically. He tried to speak a few times, trying to apologize to specters of the past and justify himself to Hayley, but all that came out were indiscernible gasps and mortifyingly loud sobs. Hayley held him through it, not judging or pulling away in disgust or laughing at him or getting pissed off. She just squeezed and rocked and shushed. 

It felt like an eternity before he was quiet and had resumed normal sinus rhythm. Even when he was done, he didn’t let go of Hayley. She was running her fingers up and down his back on top of his shirt, the material gliding against his skin delicately. Every time she hit the bottom of his back or the top of his shoulders, it set off a cascade of sparks in his head.

“You know you deserve better,” she whispered gently. “No one has the right to lay a hand on you, Niall. No one has the right to abuse you or make you feel inferior. Not Syco or Sony or Louis or Zayn. No one. I’m sorry you’re living through this. You deserve better.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, because he really needed to get everything out. He felt clean and fresh and… and  _ free _ just talking about it. He had no more secrets. He was a window pane, and she had looked through, past the cracks and the smudges, to what was inside, and she was still wrapped around him. 

He squeezed her so tight. He was not going to surrender to his life anymore. He had her, and she was everything he had been searching for his whole life as Boybander Niall Horan: acceptance. “Thank you.”

“Thank  _ you _ ,” she echoed. 

“Hayley.” He pressed his lips sensually to the damp, salty skin of her neck. She moaned reflexively, the sound nearly pulling a moan from him. He swallowed it down and kissed her a little higher. She moaned again.

“Niall,” she objected feebly. 

“What?” he mumbled against her skin, lips moving to suck at the front of her neck. She moaned and he kissed the dip at the base of her throat. “Hayley, Hayley, Hayley.” He kissed her after every emission of her name. She was a quivering, mewling body in his arms. 

“Niall,” she gasped again, and there was no objection in it this time. She slipped her hand under the back of his shirt and rucked it up, cold fingers pressing against his skin, making him gasp. He bit down on her shoulder in surprise and she cried out in pleasure. “God,” she whimpered.

He pulled his face up to look at her. “I think I might love you,” he breathed sincerely.

Her chest was heaving, and it was making something carnal twist around low in Niall’s belly. He lifted his eyes from her breasts to her face and felt his heart tug in his chest. 

She looked like someone had just handed her everything she could ever want on a silver platter. He grinned uninhibitedly, because  _ he _ was everything she ever wanted on a silver platter, and  _ god  _ what an intoxicating feeling it was to be desired. 

He launched in and slammed his mouth over hers, effectively kissing the life out of her as he pressed her roughly against the window.

“Mmmf,” she muffled against him. She disconnected her mouth, but he chased after it, not letting her get away so easily. He wouldn’t stop until she physically put her hand between them. He groaned at the loss of contact.

“I- I- ” she panted. “I mean, obviously I love you, too.”

He whined, because he had never heard anything so enthralling. “I know,” he said, warm ecstasy bubbling to fill his chest and lungs and head. He felt so alive, every nerve turned up to ten. “Christ above,  _ I know _ .” 

She grinned. “Just so we’re clear.”

He ducked around her hand and sucked at her neck again, nipping a bit. “We couldn’t be clearer.”

“We could,” she contradicted disjointedly around a moan. “The couch isn’t great for sleeping.”

Niall lifted his head to look at her, eyes blazing at the sight of hers, lit up and turned on. Same page. “I’m not tired anyway,” he growled.

“Good,” she lauded huskily. “Cuz I think we’re gonna be awake for a while.”

She moved her hands around his hip bones, hooking her fingers into his front belt loops and tugging so they were flush against each other. She stepped backwards, pulling the curtain open behind her and falling onto the bed. She propped herself up on her elbows, and he took that as permission to crawl on top of her and kiss her again, hips pressing into hips with heady desperation.


	5. Breakfast Fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and fluffy.

Niall groaned when he shifted and his arm pulled the blanket away from his eyes, letting the sun burn the retinas behind the lids. He made to roll over, acutely aware of how sore he felt, how heavy his limbs were, and gave up, opting to just pull the blanket back over his head. It smelled sweaty under the blanket. His nostrils flared distastefully and he pulled the blanket back down, burying his face in the pillows. He inhaled.

They didn’t smell like hotel pillows. Niall’s eyes flew open and he jerked his head up, blinking the sleep away in panic. The air smelled like something breakfast-y, warm and sweet. He could hear something sizzling in the distance. Where the Hell…?

He flipped onto his back and a white mesh canopy came into focus. He turned his face to look at the empty pillows next to him, their colorful cases all mismatching each other and the sheets. Definitely  _ not _ a hotel. 

His eyes dropped shut. He needed more sleep. He was so tired. 

The sizzling stopped. There was the sound of clinking silverware and shortly after, Niall felt the bed sink down at the end, springs creaking in protest of the movement. The sound made Niall grin devilishly, but he couldn’t think of why. He dragged his eyes open to see what was going on. 

Hayley was crawling up the bed on her knees. She smiled when she saw that Niall was awake, his eyes raking up her body. She was nearly naked, wearing nothing but a bra and his boxers, holding a plate of food in one hand. He was suddenly hungry, but his sleep-addled mind couldn’t decide what for.

She put down the plate and braced her arms on either side of his head, leaning down to kiss him. He kissed back, every memory from the night before flooding back to him at hyper-speed. He pulled away, dizzy.

“Morning, gorgeous,” she murmured, staring deeply into his eyes.

“I’m pretty sure that’s my line,” he chuckled.

“I didn’t feel like waiting for it.” She leaned down and kissed him again. He reached a hand up into her hair, knotting it in his fingers. She pulled away.

“I made you something to eat before you go.” She sat up and lifted the plate, crossing her legs beneath her. 

He blinked, trying to dredge up the memory of something before midnight. Where was he going? 

She was looking at him in concern. “You okay?”

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, shaking the muddiness out of his head. “Sex hangover.”

She laughed and jabbed something onto the fork. “This’ll help,” she promised. He opened his mouth and accepted it. It was mushy cinnamon deliciousness. 

“What is it?”

“Apple pie crepe.” 

He swallowed and opened his mouth for more. She fed him another forkful, then put the plate down on his lap.

“You know how to eat?” she teased.

He stuck his tongue out, but picked up the fork and shoveled the crepes in, stomach growling ferociously. He was starving as usual. Hayley watched him in anticipation, and he realized what she was waiting for. 

“It’s amazing,” he complimented fervently. 

She blew out her breath in relief. “I’ll write that recipe down, then.”

“You made it up?” It was so good, and just the right amount of fluffy.

She nodded. “Crepes are my specialty.”

He scraped up the last piece. “Can I get some more? You could show me how to make them.”

She shook her head. “There’s not enough time.”

The Today Show.  _ Shit. _ He looked around wildly for a clock. 

“Almost seven,” she told him.

Shit, shit, shit. He’d totally missed soundcheck. The performance  _ started _ at nine. As in they needed to be on stand-by for stage entry in ninety minutes, fully dressed and made up and mics in place. He bolted out from under the blankets and gathered his clothes from the floor. “I need those back,” he told Hayley. She pulled off the boxers and handed them off to Niall, her own underpants underneath. He tried not to look disappointed. 

She watched him tug all of his garments on maniacally, swearing when he realized his boxers were on backwards. 

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” she said after a minute, and Niall stopped to listen, cocking his head to one side upon spying her expression, which was one of intense despondency. He frowned and opened his mouth, but she continued. “You’ll probably be gone by the time I get out, so… good luck with everything today. The shows and all.” 

Niall was still confused by her tone and stiff body language. She stood up and moved in to kiss him quickly on the cheek. “Thanks for yesterday,” she said quietly into his ear. Her breath tickled and he shivered. She started walking away to the bathroom, but Niall held onto her arm. She spun around and their eyes met.

He only had one leg in his pants and he was going to be late, but he needed to understand where this gloom was coming from and make it go away. But one quick scan of her face and he realized he didn’t have time for that. 

“Write your number down for me first,” he told her instead.

It was her turn to be confused. “Why?”

He felt like she’d punched him in the chest. She didn’t want anything else to do with him; he was nothing but a one night stand for her; she hadn’t felt any of the emotion he had-

_ Oh.  _

_ That _ was why she looked upset. She thought  _ he  _ felt that way.

He fought a smile, knowing that her bad mood would only last another few seconds. “How am I supposed to call my girlfriend while I’m on tour if I don’t have her number?”

Her mouth popped open and her eyes widened hopefully. “Your… girlfriend…?”

He pecked her on the mouth. “I really wish I had time for this, but I’m late. Write down your number, and I’ll call you later to make plans for a meet-up after the show tonight.”

She grabbed his face between her hands and kissed him with a fierce joy. He pulled away, the temptation to deepen the kiss almost too enticing. 

“Hayley,” he prompted.

“Right!” She exclaimed. She ran back into the kitchen, scribbling on a sticky notepad that hung on the refrigerator. He crammed himself into the rest of his clothes, turned his phone on, and went over to her, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. She folded the paper in half and turned around to slip it in his back pocket. She let her hands linger in them for a minute, leaning up to kiss him shortly, before pulling them out to push him back. 

“Go,” she told him. “I have a break at noon.”

He ran to the door, pulling his phone out of his pocket and typing in speed dial number four. It took a minute to get a dial tone. “I miss you already!” He called out as he closed the door. He galloped down the stairs before he heard her respond, but he knew she did. He was on the second floor before the phone started ringing, and was out the door before Paul picked up, chasing the giddy smile off his face.

“Tell me where you are so I can come kill you,” he said by way of greeting. 

Niall sighed through his nose. “Morning Paul.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” he threatened darkly. “Where are you?” 

He glanced up at the street signs and relayed it. “It’s in Chelsea,” he added. “I’m right on the corner.”

“I’ll be there in five.”

“It’ll take longer than that from Rock Center,” he said. “I’m close to the water.”

“The perfect place to dispose of a body.” The line went dead. Niall couldn’t be upset with Paul, because really, it was his own fault. He realized that he had left the hat and sunglasses back upstairs, and prayed that Paul could get to him before he was recognized. 


	6. Quitting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally ALL of the angst here. Also some quiet Narry solidarity.

The taxi trip to the plaza from Hayley’s apartment was the most tangibly tense fifteen minutes of Niall’s life, and not only because their driver drove like a stuntman from  _ The Fast and The Furious. _ Paul shoved a handful of bills at the man when they stopped and Niall scrambled out of the car as fast as he could, trying to make it inside before Paul could reach him.

No such luck.

“Hey!” Paul snared his shoulder and spun him around, shoving his back against the door. He leaned down in his face and jabbed a finger sharply into his chest unintentionally prodding the edge of a bruise Hayley had left. Niall yelped. 

“Let me tell you something,” Paul snarled, “I don’t care how famous you are or how old you get. When I call you, you  _ pick up the goddamn phone. _ Are we clear?”

Niall was shirked back into himself and opened his mouth to whimper an apology, but he paused. He remembered Hayley’s words from the previous afternoon about how being like him made her strong, and he remembered his own superman feeling that thinking she might love him had brought on. Now he  _ knew _ she loved him, so he glared back at Paul and shoved his hand away. Paul looked taken aback. 

“Crystal,” Niall growled. “Is that all?”

Paul gaped in stunned silence for a minute, then wrestled Niall into a one-armed bear hug. “Don’t be like that, kid,” he pleaded gently. “We called you a hundred times and you never picked up the phone. I was so worried that something had happened. I’m responsible for you. I couldn’t live with myself if… on my watch…”

Niall felt familiar guilt wash over him. Paul wouldn’t have just been worried about Niall in relation to his job. Paul had known Niall since One Direction was on X-Factor. He’d talked him through problems and drove him home when he was sloshed and ran his errands when he was too sick to leave the hotel room. He probably saw Niall as one of his sons.

“I’m sorry, Paul,” he apologized. “I won’t do it again.”

“Damn right you won’t.” He pulled away to look down at Niall sternly.

“I won’t,” he promised. 

Paul appraised him. “Was that what you were wearing yesterday?”

Niall hung his head. “I was hoping no one would notice.”

Paul grinned a typical Paul grin. “Usually it’s Harry I have this chat with,” he said. “What was her name? Or his name?”

“It’s a  _ long  _ story,” Niall groaned. 

The fangirls in the plaza lifted up a scream, and Niall suddenly became aware of their presence. Paul wrenched open the door and shoved him inside. “Tell me later,” he instructed. “Right now, you need to get to wardrobe.”

Wardrobe didn’t take as long as Niall had hoped, and he was fully changed and styled by eight o’clock, being led to the greenroom with Erik and Drew hot on his heels, not letting him out of their sight. He could feel their curiosity and anger radiating into him in waves, but Paul must have gotten to them first, because they didn’t ask a single one of the five million questions Niall knew they had. 

Drew was the only one who said anything, and it was, “Call out if you need us”, as they arrived at the greenroom door. Niall gulped at the thought that he may actually need to shout for help when the other guys got their hands on him. He nodded once, clenching his jaw, and slowly opened the door.

The lazy faces of his band mates looked up at him in surprise.

“Niall!” Liam exclaimed, jumping off the window sill. His voice was only half exasperation: the other half was relief, which was nice, given the circumstances.

A glance at everyone else showed they weren’t nearly as pleased by his arrival. Zayn, Louis, even the normally chilled-out Harry had also jumped to their feet, and were glaring at him with hostile, venomous hatred. Zayn’s eyes were burning hottest. He stormed up to Niall without a second’s hesitation. 

“Where the  _ FUCK _ have you been?!” He spat, getting low in Niall’s face. 

Hayley loved him. She cared about him, and she didn’t think he deserved to put up with Zayn. The hulk strength took over again, and Niall, who normally would have looked away hanging his head in shame, scowled back at Zayn defiantly. 

“A couple blocks south of none-of-your-business,” he replied coldly. He made to squeeze past Zayn, but Zayn shoved him roughly at the shoulders with both hands. Niall’s hands came up automatically and shoved back just as hard. 

Zayn stumbled, staggered. Niall was just as surprised. He  _ never _ shoved Zayn back.

“Hey,” Liam warned. Niall looked up at Liam, wondering with guilt what Liam was thinking at the sight of Niall showing up and fighting like nothing had changed since yesterday. Zayn recovered before Niall did and used his distraction to shove him against the door. It rattled on its hinges, and Zayn locked it so no one could interfere. Niall’s fleeting moment of backbone gone, he cowered away from Zayn.

“Excuse me, not _WHOSE_ business?” Zayn shouted. “It’s not the business of your _BAND MATES_ if you would be on time for the opening promotional television performance of our _NEW WORLD_ _TOUR_? Our first performance in two months and it’s not our business if you would be here or stay holed up with some prostitute-”

“She’s not a prostitute!” Niall defended reflexively, slapping himself when he realized Zayn didn’t know about Hayley and was just speaking in generalities.

Harry groaned, “ _ Niall _ ,” and Louis swore, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“You were with a girl this whole time?” Liam demanded seriously.

Niall glanced around past Zayn’s head to look at Liam’s unreadable expression. “Yes.”

Zayn scoffed.

“I was!” Niall protested.

“Right,” Zayn sneered. “You say ‘girl’, but what does her pimp say? Does she have a name? Or does she just go by the name of the bar that she services-”

“She’s  _ not _ a prostitute,” Niall interrupted again through gritted silver-toned teeth. “Her name is Hayley. And I didn’t meet her in a bar, I met her at lunch.”

“So then where were you last night?” Liam pressed. 

“With Hayley.”

“She was with you all day and still wanted to spend the night with you?” Louis remarked skeptically. 

“Don’t be an asshole,” Niall snapped at him.

“ _ You’re _ the asshole! You jeopardized everyone’s career for a one night stand!” Zayn barked furiously.

“She isn’t a one night stand,” Niall confessed heatedly. “She- well, she’s… my girlfriend.”

The room was frozen.

“Hayley sounds like a fan’s name,” Zayn eventually suspected.

Niall blushed, knowing exactly what he meant. “She is, but–”

“In other words, she’s agreed to date you because you’re a member of One Direction, and it doesn’t matter which-”

“She’s not like that!”

“And you’ve naively taken the bait because you are not only the loneliest person in history, but you’re also a grade A twat!”

“Twat,” Louis confirmed. “Total twat.”

No one was listening. 

“She’s sweet,” Niall growled. “She’s a good person and she actually cares! It’s nice to have someone care about me!”

“We care about you!” Liam jumped in right away.

Niall laughed, the sound harsh, but he couldn’t help it. Liam was not a liar and he was not stupid. Niall knew he was in substantial denial about everything that had been going on, but this was extreme even for him. “ _ None _ of you care about me!”

“We all do!” Except Liam was the only one fighting him on this. The other boys looked on almost indifferently. “We’re a  _ band _ , Niall, and-”

“Yes,” Zayn interjected. “You’re right. You’re both right.  _ We’re a band _ . And why should the rest of us care about someone who doesn’t care about that? Someone who doesn’t even do us the common courtesy of simply sending a text to let us know he wasn’t gonna fuck this appearance up for us!”

“Were you concerned about me even once?” Niall fumed, hands clenched into fists at his hips. “Huh? Did you stop to consider I might have gotten into an accident or been abducted or fallen ill? All you thought of was your own career! All you  _ ever _ think of are yourselves!”

“Of the  _ band _ ,” Zayn emphasized with one hand, speaking for the whole group without even acknowledging them. It didn’t matter anyway: Louis was glaring in his agreement, Harry had his phone out and was typing away furiously, and Liam was just standing by in helpless silence. “We were worried about the _ band- _ ”

“Only because  _ you _ aren’t worth a damn without it!”

“And how our fans would feel if we failed to perform for them,” Zayn continued loudly.

“Only because they sign  _ your  _ paychecks!” Niall got louder to compete.

“And how that would affect our futures!”

“Again you think of nothing but yourself!”

“ _ Us?! _ ” Zayn slammed him against the door again, Niall’s head bouncing off the wood harshly. He lifted a hand to massage it out, but Zayn misinterpreted as an attempt to retaliate, and he snatched Niall’s wrists in both of his hands and lifted them up over his head where he couldn’t use them. Niall wriggled around, but Zayn’s muscles weren’t just for show. “You’re the one who didn’t think about what would happen to everyone else if you left without a trace-”

“Like any of you think about  _ me _ when you make a decision!” 

“Like you even act like you’re one of us anymore!”

“ _ You _ lot don’t act like I’m one of you anymore!”

“Because you’re always in this selfish bubble of negativity!”

“A bubble  _ you all put me in _ !” He couldn’t decide if he would go hoarse first, or if Zayn’s grip would snap his arms first.

“ _ YOU DID IT TO YOURSELF! _ ” Maybe Zayn would go hoarse first. At this rate, they wouldn’t be able to hit their notes on stage. “Don’t you  _ fucking DARE _ blame this on us!  _ YOU _ can’t handle the pressure and the responsibility of being famous and you’re bringing the  _ whole band down _ !”

“Well, you won’t have to worry about that anymore because  _ I QUIT! _ ”

The tap-tap-tap of Harry’s iPhone abruptly cut out, along with Zayn’s voice, and the room went eerily still as eight eyes stared through Niall in shock.

“Quit the  _ band _ ?” It was Louis who finally spoke, getting tentatively back to his feet.

Niall wrenched his hands from Zayn’s now slack hold on him, his heart slamming against his ribs, his lungs fighting for air. When he had said, “I don’t want to do this anymore” to Hayley last night in front of the window, he hadn’t meant he wanted to quit  _ today _ -

Or had he? Maybe he’d wanted to quit every day for the last twelve months, and maybe all he needed to walk away was support, the knowledge that someone had his back and thought he was doing the right thing. Now he had that, had somewhere to go when it was all over, and he was just so tired of not being happy anymore.

Niall answered the question with his eyes still on Zayn’s face, feeling a feral pleasure in seeing him so flabbergasted… a pleasure he knew he wouldn’t get from looking at Louis or Harry or – especially – Liam.

“Yes.”

The moment the word left his mouth, he wanted to take it back, swallow it down, apologize to the boys for ever thinking of it, and go on like nothing had happened.

No. He wouldn’t let himself do that. Something  _ had _ happened. He inhaled and continued, “I’ll do the whole tour since it’s all sold out, but when it’s over, I’m done. That’s it. I can’t do this anymore, and I  _ won’t _ .” 

Zayn stared back at him for a single beat before shunting him to the side and vanishing through the door, slamming it behind him. 

Niall’s eyes flickered to the faces of the others. There was a strange resignation on Harry’s face as he collapsed back onto the couch and looked up at Niall, acceptance tinged with…longing? Envy? Something. Liam’s face, as predicted, was the hardest to look at. He was hurt, on the verge of tears and confused. And guilty: there was guilt etched into every pore. He felt directly responsible. Louis was dangling on a precipice of a hysterical meltdown. His eyes were dangerously lit up and he chuckled almost madly. 

“You can’t quit,” he said matter-of-factly, a childish smile plastered to his face. He looked from boy to boy, the smile sliding from his lips when none of them confirmed his conviction. His head jerked back to Niall. “You can’t quit,” he repeated desperately. “You’re under contract! If you quit, you get cut off from royalties and- and you can’t sign with anyone as a solo artist for the rest of your life! You’ll be- you’ll- you’ll have nothing! You can’t quit!”

“I have to.” It was a pathetic whisper. He couldn’t even bear to look at any of them. His sneakers were nice; they were kind of dirty, but they still looked pretty and expensive…

“But  _ you’ll have nothing _ !” Louis said again, his voice mean and expression nasty this time. “Everything you’ve worked all this time for will disappear. It’ll all mean  _ nothing _ . You’ll lose all your privileges and benefits and  _ you’ll _ mean nothing!”

“Only if he quits.” It was the first thing Harry had said since Niall walked into the room. 

Louis pitched a confused look at him. “Yes, Harry, if he quits. And he’s quitting, so-”

“So he’d lose everything,” Harry finished, finally getting off the couch and standing to look Louis in the eye. “I know, Lou. But there’s a clause in our contract that protects us and all our rights and assets in the event of band dissolution. Like now.”

“Dissolution?” Louis’s brow furrowed.

Harry took in a shaky breath. “If the band mutually breaks up, no one loses anything.”

Liam made a strangled sound, realizing what Harry was saying. Harry turned to look at Niall, who could not convey through looks alone just how grateful he was.

He was quitting, too.

“I don’t understand,” Louis croaked numbly.

Harry sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. “Lou, how long do you think we can keep this up?”

“Harold, don’t you  _ dare _ -”

“You can’t tell me you still want this,” Harry told him, pulling his head out of his fingers to lock eyes with him. 

“I do!” Louis stuck his chin out stubbornly. 

“No, you  _ don’t _ !” Harry yelled, completely out of character. Not only did Harry never yell, he certainly never berated Louis. “You want what we had two year ago! Celebrity status that came with contentment! This,” he gestured wildly around with both arms, “is what that looks like in excess and it’s  _ making all of us miserable! _ And if you say it’s not, you’re deeper in denial than Liam!” Harry turned to address all three of them. “My whole life, this was my dream job. I don’t want it anymore. And I… I realize that now. I can’t stand the thought of doing this anymore.”

It was weird to hear someone finally vocalize the most common thoughts in his head. Niall was staring at Harry, not planning a next step or wondering where this left them, but rather feeling closer to Harry than he had in years. He and Harry had been very close when they were on X-Factor, but he started getting sick of taking a back seat to the Larry Stylinson show, so after a while, he walked away from their bromance once he realized he and Liam had been nursing a close friendship for months. The look he and Harry shared right then made him feel like they’d never parted ways.

“Jinx,” Niall joked.

Harry smiled.

“Hazza-”

“You’re not gonna change my mind about this, Lou,” said Harry, looking back at his best friend. 

“Fine!” Louis hollered. “We don’t need you two and your ‘band dissolution’ rubbish! The three of us will just carry on being One Direction!”

Harry gave him a flat look. Despite the Directioner’s code to love all the boys equally, Harry was the clear favorite. Even for the fangirls who had another favorite, Harry ran a very close second. If they lost Harry, they lost most of their fanbase.

Louis ignored the look and moved to stand with Liam, throwing his arm around him in a show of solidarity. Liam’s expression was completely illegible, a jumbled hodge-podge of emotions and thoughts. Louis looked at him, waiting for back-up, but when Liam wouldn’t even meet his gaze, he flinched off him in disgust. 

“You want out, too,” he accused.

Liam closed his eyes and huffed noncommittally. “I don’t know what I want, Lou, alright?”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Louis exploded. “Zayn and I will remain a band, then! And we’ll bring in new faces to replace you lot! They do it all the time!”

“Lou, give it a rest!” Harry commanded angrily. “It’s done!”

“ _ I don’t want it to be done! _ ” Louis screeched. “This job is my life! What am I without it? What are  _ any of us _ ?” He rounded on Niall and Liam. “I’ll tell you what: a bunch of broke nobodies! I spent my whole life as a broke nobody and I am  _ not _ going back!”

“Lou,” Harry began, his voice calm and smooth once more. “Be logical. With the royalties and residual fame-”

“How can you expect him to be logical?” Liam interrupted in a faltering voice. “You’re making a decision that he has no control over, but one that has complete control over  _ him _ . He’s scared. And you want him to be logical?”

“If you’re not gonna pick a side, Li, stop talking, please,” Harry half-snapped.

“I can’t think straight,” Liam said defensively.

“Then shut up?” Harry suggested. 

Liam frowned. Harry frowned back.

“That was mean. Sorry,” he apologized.

Liam shook his head with a sigh. “You’ve got a point.”

“No one has a point,” Louis growled.

“Lou,” Harry said wearily. “Stop thinking about this in terms of just you.”

“I’m not! I’m the only one thinking in the best interest of all of us!”

“Louis, we’re not happy anymore!”

Louis waved dismissively. “Well, you’re not  _ un _ happy-”

“Yes, I am.”

He blinked. “What are you talking-”

“I’m  _ depressed _ , Lou. I’m sick and I’m tired and I hate all of it.”

Louis gave him a meaningful look and opened his mouth, but Harry cut him off with, “Yes.  _ All  _ of it.”

They stared at each other heavily, a thick cushion of silence swelling to separate the legendarily inseparable pair once and for all. With a flare of the nostrils, Louis vanished the way Zayn had: shoving past Niall quickly, wordlessly, and slamming the door behind him. Harry only stayed inanimate long enough for their ears to forget the slamming sound before he followed after him. 

Niall collapsed to the floor, fighting a barrage of overwhelmed tears. He pulled his practically dead phone from his pocket. 8:19. Almost four hours until he could call Hayley. He so desperately needed to talk to her right now. He finally understood how Liam always felt. He stared into space, feeling lost. What he needed was fresh air to clear his head. 

Well, what he really needed was Hayley kissing him until he forgot that he wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger in  _ Predator _ . He pictured himself running around in camouflage, not letting his wounds stop him as he defeated the invisible monsters trying to annihilate him. He needed Hayley to do that, but the fresh air might help a little, because maybe the monsters couldn’t follow him outside. This was officially his least favorite greenroom in the history of ever. He used the doorknob to pull himself to his feet.

“Niall,” Liam’s voice froze him. Reluctantly, he turned around.

If Niall was feeling lost, it was nothing compared to the way Liam looked. Pain, bewilderment, thinking too hard… it was all there, the perfect image of disquiet. Niall could see in his eyes that Liam genuinely didn’t know what he wanted, and he was surprised at himself for not knowing, like he never realized there was a part of him that wanted out. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Liam urged him. He sounded weak, defeated, and so vulnerable. It hit Niall hard in the chest, punching the precise button that unleashed his already copious Liam-guilt and added to it. He decided that crestfallen was beyond doubt a word.

“I don’t want to do this,” Niall revealed. And at the root of it all, he really didn’t. Not because of the fame or money or uncertain future; because quitting the band meant finally acknowledging that One Direction was gone beyond retrieval. It meant none of their relationships were salvageable, and it meant Niall wasn’t Niall anymore. It meant that, in spite of higher-than-ever-and-still-rising sales figures and media coverage and fan interest, they had already peaked. The climax was over, and here they were, wound down into a pool of despair.

“Then don’t.” Liam’s plea twisted in his chest again. 

“I have to.” Which of them was he trying to convince?

“You don’t, though!”

Niall took a good hard look at Liam, searching his face for some hint, examining every feature for an answer as to his exact thoughts. But Liam’s face wasn’t a coherent map of his feelings; it wasn’t coherent, period.

“Li, what do you want from me?”

He hadn’t meant to put the ‘from me’ at the end, but he decided not to correct it. Liam shook his head like he wasn’t sure, but replied with firm certainty, “I want you to stay.”

Niall frowned. 

“I mean it,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you, Niall. You’re my best mate.”

Niall was too drained to laugh. “Was.”

“Still are,” Liam argued inflexibly. “Always will be.”

But even as he said it, all Niall could think was how they never were. True best friends were open and honest, trusting each other on a level no one else could possibly understand. Harry and Louis had always been that way. Niall and Liam had never quite reached it. 

“Li,” he sighed, hoping the catch in his throat would stop him from crying. “How long have I been cutting?”

Liam blinked. “Cutting…? Cutting what?”

It was like a slap in the face. Speaking technically, it was his own fault Liam didn’t know, because he’d never told  _ any _ of them the truth about his past, about how he was handling or not handling the whirlwind they were living through. 

Then again, they had never asked him. Even when they would have called each other “brother” or even the occasional “Soul mate, no homo”, not one of them ever pressed Niall about his life. They sensed it was something he didn’t want to talk about, and they left it be, choosing instead to offer every detail about themselves. But it wasn’t even brought up in all of those private, one-on-one bonding sessions with each other. He could have recited word for word the lives and thoughts of each of the boys from birth to age twenty-three, and all the rest of them could do was speculate about him. And that validated the pain in his chest as far as he was concerned. 

Niall shook his head for the millionth time. “I’ll see you later, ‘best mate’.”


	7. Calling Danielle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in Liam's POV. Mostly just a phone call with Danielle. Short and Sweet.

Liam didn’t try to stop Niall this time as he raced out the door just as the tears flooded down: he was too busy trying to stop his own.

The number was half-dialed before the phone was all the way out of his pocket. The line only rang twice before it clicked, signaling a pick-up.

“Hello?”

Instantly, Liam felt his systems calm down. His breathing evened, his heart rate slowed, and his advancing fit of hysterics retreated. An overpowering sense of calm rushed through him like always at the sound of Danielle’s voice. He inhaled deeply, imagining her scent.

“God, I miss you,” he blurted.

Danielle laughed deeply, widely, her whole heart in the sound. Liam laughed, feeling loved by the passionate noise.

“How are you, lovely?” he asked, making a kissing sound into the phone.

She kissed back. “I’m alright, babe. You?”

“Knackered, but otherwise.”

“Early there, innit?”

“Round 8:30. Not terrible.”

“You lot play at nine?”

“Nine, yeah.” Liam always found it funny how much thicker his accent always became when he spoke to Danielle. The time spent with his bandmates had dulled down and mixed all their accents in with each other, but when he and Danielle talked, he felt so much like the person he was at the start of all this that he reverted to the accent he had when they first met. 

“I’ve got you on telly,” she revealed like a secret. “Starting to feel the nerves?”

“No.”

“Oh.” This seemed to surprise her. “Are you well?” She asked after a minute.

“You’ve already asked.”

“I forgot your answer.”

“Meh.”

“Why are you phoning?”

“I can’t just phone you to talk?”

“Stop that. We just facetimed six hours ago.”

Liam shrugged, then remembered she couldn’t see him. “I dunno, I just… wanted to hear your voice.” It wasn’t a lie.

“Aw,” she cooed, but he could tell she knew there was more to it. 

“So…” he trailed off.

“Yes?” She prompted.

“How are our finances?”

“Everything’s paid off, our stocks are doing well, and our savings funds are tens of millions strong,” she rattled off. “We’re doing fine, of course.” She didn’t ask why he was checking, so she must have had a hunch.

“Alright.”

“Li, if you need to drop some endorsements, just do it. If you don’t like the direction they’re pushing you in, put your foot down. You know I have your back. We don’t need more money.”

Liam never ceased to be amazed by how perfect she was. He in no way deserved her. “For once, they aren’t pushing more adverts.”

“Don’t you dare let them add more daytime television performances on this tour,” she said fiercely. “You’ll be shattered enough with a show per night. You’ll lose your voice and get sick. All of you are already overworked.”

“Not much longer,” said Liam. “Niall quit the band.” 

Danielle didn’t say anything. 

“Danni?” Liam asked after a few seconds.

“Jesus,” she breathed. She cleared her throat. “How did that go over?”

“Zayn and Lou are pissed, but I think Harry’s a bit pleased, to be honest.”

“And you?”

He answered a different question. “I think we’re gonna go to management and appeal a band dissolution.”

“Is that what you want?” She questioned evenly.

“I don’t know.” He sighed heavily. “What do I want, Danielle?”

“You want to quit as well.”

“I do?”

“Li, of course you do! You still love this? And don’t lie to me, I know better.”

He remembered Harry’s words to Lou. “I don’t _ hate _ it.”

“But you hate what it’s become. And what it wants you to be.”

He mulled this over. He’d never consciously thought of that, but somehow, Danielle knew he was feeling it. “I do, don’t I?”

“You do.”

“But I don’t know. I mean, do I really wanna quit?”

“Yes.”

A part of Liam was still skeptical. “But-”

“Li,  _ I _ want you to quit, okay?” Danielle cut in. “I’m over it.”

Liam stopped short. Danielle never once throughout the entirety of their relationship voiced a negative opinion on his job. She was ever the obedient fangirl, ever the supportive girlfriend. If he ever disliked something that was happening, she would play devil’s advocate so he could see both sides and grow to more fully understand the problem. 

When he became upset, she had hugs and words of comfort. When he wanted to celebrate, she was the first to light the cake. She had always been a nonbiased voice that kept him afloat in times of doubt. He owed her his life, a life he wanted to live out with her by his side, so that he could repay her for every time she had ever done something to make it more manageable. Instantly, all question left him: if Danielle wanted him out, he wanted out, too. 

“Li?”

“You’re right,” he said. “I  _ do _ want to quit.”

There was a knock on the door a half second before it swung open intrusively. Jeremy walked in with a clipboard and a massive bulky headset. 

“Okay, we’re ready for you boys at mic-up.” He peered up from the clipboard and paled at the nearly empty room.

“I’ll be right there,” Liam told him. 

Jeremy wasn’t listening. He was frantically speaking into a walkie-talkie, mumbling too low and fast for Liam to make out. He assumed it was either a “We lost the band- find them” broadcast, or a “we lost the band- hide anything fragile” broadcast. The last time they’d escaped the greenroom pre performance on The Today Show, they’d crashed a camera dolly into a spotlight and knocked it over, sending the pole it was clipped to flying into the window-wall that faced the street. It shattered into hundreds of pieces, the debris spillage on the sidewalk causing an already rowdy Louis to inappropriately declare “Kristall Nacht!” from off-camera loudly enough for the live audience watching from home to hear. The show, the network, and their PR people had been in a hurricane of shit after that. Poor Jeremy looked terrified by the idea of a repeat.

“Be right where?” Danielle asked.

“Mic-up.”

“And what will they be doing there?”

“I wonder,” Liam said sarcastically. Danielle laughed.

“Go wreck it, love,” she wished with a kissing sound. “I love you. We’ll talk more when you get off stage.”

“Will you be awake?”

“I’ll stay up.”

“Thank you.” He swallowed. “For everything, Danielle. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He hung up the phone and turned to ask Jeremy to point him towards mic-up, but he took his red face and hair tugging as a sign that he should just go look for it himself.


	8. Larry Comeback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry's POV: a MASSIVE amount of Larry Stylinson angst. Ends positively, though, so don't worry. Ed Sheeran guest stars.

Harry knew Louis as well as if he had made him from scratch. Since the formation of the band, since the bungalow, since even their first fateful meeting in the toilets at tryouts, as much as had changed, Louis had stayed the same. 

_ Dependable, _ Harry had once thought it appreciatively. Now he just saw it as immaturity; he had for months. 

And the more strained their lives got, the more immature Louis became, lost within the finer workings of his own defense mechanism. Harry hadn’t seen traces of his true best friend in over a year, and he really did miss him. But Louis had enough of himself left that Harry knew exactly where he’d be.

Harry walked halfway around the building with his head looking up, praying he wouldn’t have to go anywhere near the fan-infested side. He spotted the telltale dangling espadrilles just in time. Finding the sills and railings Louis must have used, Harry hoisted himself up to sit next to him on the third floor fire escape. Or he attempted to anyway: the ladder had long been rusted past safe usage, and he had none of Louis’s ape-like dexterity.

“Look at this bell-end,” Louis taunted as Harry lost proper grip on one of the window sills below and had to jump back to the ground to start over. Harry ignored him completely, and Louis’s blue eyes watched him slip again before he finally gave in.

“Thanks,” Harry said, receiving the hand Louis offered.

The two settled in next to each other without exchanging a word. Louis kicked around a bit in the air, but Harry kept his own sneakered feet still. It was what made their relationship work- the older lad from Doncaster and the younger boy from Cheshire, the chilled-out charmer and the cheeky loose-cannon; both social in their own ways, but both smarter and more deeply emotional than anyone on the outside would ever guess. Sometimes, that truth about who they were when they could be their real selves felt like a secret shared by only the two of them. 

In public, Louis kept their lives exciting, and Harry brought them back when they took it too far. Like the clichéd Yin and Yang, they complimented each other in ways neither of them understood, but both of them needed. It was why the fans never suspected their relationship was anything but perfect, why their bromance was often mistaken for the real deal. 

It was why Harry had been secretly in love with Louis since the day Louis jumped into his arms on the bootcamp stage when they were told they would be put together as a group. That was the moment the realization of  _ “holy shit, what am I feeling right now” _ first took root in his pounding chest. They hadn’t even been told they were going to be put through to judge’s houses yet: just that they were going to be put together as a group, and Louis had been so excited by the mere prospect of being in a band with Harry that he’d leapt into his arms, wrapped his thighs around Harry’s waist and arms around Harry’s neck. Harry had been stunned with so much joy that night that it took him a couple of days for the X-Factor high to wear off and leave behind just a feeling that couldn’t be anything other than the joy of first love. 

It was why during their time on the X-Factor, sometimes it felt like Louis might feel the same. But after so many weeks of Harry throwing himself at Louis and Louis indulging him without ever taking it to the next step, Harry realized that the feelings were one-sided. And at first, that was okay. It was okay after they moved in together when the show finished. It was okay every time the fans and interviewers poked fun at their too-close friendship and Louis’ eyes shined with delight as he touched some part of Harry in response. It was okay every time the two of them were cuddled up, wrapped tightly in each other on the couch in their flat or on their bed in a hotel room, whispering fears and feelings like secrets tumbling between their lips, Harry thinking all along that he would never need anything more than Louis exactly as he was at the center of Harry’s universe. At first, all of it was okay. Until it had become too much to bear because Harry wanted more than he could ever admit, terrified that if Louis knew how much Harry loved him and wanted him, he would lose him completely.

It was why Harry had to move out last year, and why Louis had started drinking himself silly in his absence, and why now they both hooked up with any girl they could– not because they didn’t have the time to find a woman who would understand that dating a world-renowned popstar wasn’t just a cakewalk of fame-by-association, but because they hoped to fill a suddenly present, debilitating void of loneliness left behind by each other.

It was why sitting on the fire escape felt right. Felt natural. Felt normal. It was the first thing they had done all year that didn’t feel contrived. Harry felt their familiar but long-absent emotional connection douse him like Gatorade after a match, and it was a sweet shock to his system. His whole body was trembling. He needed Louis so much.

  
  
  


In his mind, they’d time travelled back eighteen months: they were half-drunk in celebration, sitting on the roof of their London flat, discussing the new contract they’d just signed. Louis had just been thrilled to be offered a renewal, while Harry had been disturbed by some of its finer points (he’d signed it anyway). Harry voiced his concerns, but Louis had branded him a buzzkill and brushed them off as commitment issues. 

It had been laughable, the idea that Harry would have trouble committing to anything when he’d been in love with Louis and only Louis since the age of 16. “It’s not commitment issues,” he’d insisted with a frown. “It’s just… we’re giving up a lot of control over the band and our lives and all in these new terms.” 

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, did you read it all carefully?”

“Oh, so now I’m an idiot who can’t read a contract?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you implied.” Louis nudged himself into Harry’s space, pressing casually against his hip and resting his alcohol heavy head on his shoulder. “They’re offering millions, Hazza. What’s your problem?”

Millions. Millions for another five years of gruelling, non-stop work. Millions for yet another five year delay on starting their lives. “It’s just…” He’d looked down at Louis, at the guileless, watery blue eyes that he adored so much because they never gazed at him with anything but soft trust, and fought the ever-present urge to lean down and kiss him. He’d half-won, pressing his lips to Louis’s forehead instead, closing his eyes at the sound of Louis’s happy hum. “Five more years. Of this. The touring and the interviews and the recording and… I don’t know. It’s starting to exhaust me.”

He had expected a pep-talk at his confession, a commiseration or at the very least a reassuring chuckle. He hadn’t expected Louis jerking away from him, looking like he’d just been slapped. “What?”

Harry’s brow had furrowed. “What what?”

“It’s starting to  _ exhaust _ you? What are you talking about?” 

Louis had sounded defensive, like Harry’s words were a personal attack against Louis himself, and although Harry hadn’t understood it, his first instinct was always to protect and reassure Louis. 

So he had. “No, Lou, that’s not… I love it, okay? I love this job and I know how lucky we are! But…” he’d tugged at his curls, lost, because Louis had stumbled back another couple steps and was still looking hurt. “Don’t you ever just want something else?”

“Something else,” Louis’d repeatedly flatly, no trace of light in his eyes. 

Harry had started to feel desperate. “Don’t you ever want to settle down?” he’d blurted. “Have a quiet country house with lazy weekends and a dog? Maybe some kids and a… a partner who loves you and worships you and takes care of you? Don’t you ever want to get married and start a family and have a simple life?”

These had been Harry’s dreams for as long as he could remember. Every time he’d had a bad day, since the very beginning of One Direction, he’d imagined his and Louis’s wedding, imagined every sticky-sweet detail of the domestic life they could share eventually. It was his secret light at the end of a turbulent fame tunnel: a life of forever with his partner-in-crime turned lover.

But just then, his partner-in-crime was staring at him with incredulity. “Mate,” he’d said slowly. “I’m sorry, but that sounds like shit.”

Harry’s heart had plummeted. 

“Why the fuck would you want that?” Louis’d continued, unaware of the effect his words were having on Harry, each one a knife twisting into his pining heart. “The entire world is in love with us, and you’d what… give that up for a family? Give up travelling and adventure to raise some brats? Give up shagging super models whenever you want to having slow, fluffy, vanilla sex with one partner for the rest of your life?” Louis’s scoff had sounded like a gag. “No, thanks. I’ll take another five-year contract and millions of dollars.  _ Start _ a  _ family _ .”

And it had been Harry’s mouth moving of its own accord through the heartbreak. “We just sold our fucking souls with that signature.”

“Then why’d you fucking do it?” Louis’d asked with an almost-cruel laughter.

_ You, _ Harry had thought, pathetically.  _ Because I didn’t know how else to keep you. _ “I don’t know,” he’d whispered instead. And after sharing the first truly tense moment of their entire friendship, staring at each other with a horrible uncertainty and miles of unsaid words yawning like a chasm between them, Louis’d poured them another shot and expertly changed the subject.

That had been the start of their relationship fissure: when Harry realized Louis would willingly be blind to reality, to Harry’s heart, if it meant keeping his job, and Lou started thinking of Harry as a threat to his job’s longevity. A topic had been created that the boys didn’t feel comfortable discussing with each other, an abnormality in their one-hundred percent open relationship. There was a wedge preventing them from being fully connected, and it got bigger and bigger until they began passive-aggressively fighting all the time, little catty spats that had Harry climbing the walls in frustration. 

In the tension, they’d both found refuge in vice: Harry in a constant stream of meaningless sex and Louis with drunk party after drunk party after drunk party, each progressively wilder, like he was trying to show Harry the lifestyle he’d be missing out on if he chose to call it quits. Harry found each less tempting than the last. After every alcohol-infused night of watching Louis drink with everyone who wasn’t him and laugh freely at everyone else’s jokes and grind on their industry friends, Harry would pull some nameless blue-eyed person to fuck in a jealous haze in the hallway and then go to bed too early, fantasizing about the boy downstairs who would never want Harry the same way every cell in Harry’s body wanted _ him _ . 

Every bass thump through the floor was another stab to the chest. Every tentatively navigated morning-after of headaches and heartbreak just another wedge between them. 

The last straw was when Louis had thrown a particularly volatile party that had gotten way out of hand to celebrate their anniversary last summer (a party so out-of-control that the tabloids and social media would be talking about the trouble all of the celebs present got into for weeks), and while all of the guests were enjoying themselves – arguably too much – Harry couldn’t take it anymore: at his wit’s end, he yanked Lou up to his bedroom and demanded that he send the wildest guests home or end the party. 

“Tell me you’re taking the piss,” Louis had slurred over the music thumping downstairs, sour alcohol thick on his breath. “I can’t just  _ end _ the party! Half the industry is here! Do you have any idea what that would do to our party reputation? Which, I might remind you, is the best in show business!” 

Harry couldn’t have cared less about their party reputation if he had tried. “Lou, if you don’t do it, I will.”

“Oh _what_ a _wet_ _blanket_.” His tongue had sounded too big, his word dragging slickly past it. “Stop being such a tightarse. Everyone is having a good time!”

“ _ I’m _ not!” Harry had exploded.

“So then  _ leave, _ Harry,” Louis had groaned, flopping down on Harry’s bed. “I don’t know what else you want me to say! Loosen up, yeah?”

But Harry was past ‘loosen up’. It was all Louis seemed to say to him back then, and Harry couldn’t keep waiting him out. Wordlessly, he had pushed past Louis to his dresser, yanked the top drawer open, and chucked a bunch of socks and boxers into a pile at his feet. 

“What are you doing?” Louis had sounded disoriented. Harry had ignored him and walked to his closet, pulling a duffel bag from the back and tugging his signature button- down collared shirts from their hangers. His washed out jeans and jumpers had still been in piles on his bed from laundry day, and he jammed a few pairs into the duffel with the shirts. He had added his grey v-Neck tees to the boxers and socks, scooped up the whole pile, and threw them in along with his cologne and deodorant before zipping the bag closed and stepping toward the door.

Louis had stepped in front of him. “Harry.”

“Get out of my way,” he had requested in a treacherously calm tone.

“Not– no. What are you–” he had tried to shake his molasses thoughts out of the booze cloud to no avail. “I don’t– gimme a second.”

“No!” Harry had exclaimed. “This is exactly... Lou, I can’t keep... just  _ move _ .”

Louis had put both his hands up, like he was too drunk to keep up and needed Harry to slow down. “What are doing... you doing. What are you doing?”

Harry’s nostrils had flared. “You said leave, so I’m leaving. Goodbye.”

His expression had been befuddled. “I didn’t mean-”

“Good _ bye, _ Lou.” He had finally just stepped around Louis quickly. Too quickly: Louis had tried to spin with him, but he had toppled over with the motion. Harry wrenched the door open unforgivably and stomped back out into the hallway. 

The loud music had assaulted his ears, and almost drowned out the pained “Harry, wait!” that Louis had shouted after him. He had sprinted down the stairs, duffel bag slung across his body, shoving past the drunken revellers in the strobe-lit darkness of their huge living room. 

He hadn’t known what he was doing, but his feet were two thoughts ahead of him, and he realized he was walking toward Ed Sheeran, who was sitting on an ottoman, strumming on the guitar in his lap and leading a handful of guests in a spirited chorus of an upbeat ditty they all seemed to know. The people he was blustering past had started noticing him, and he left a trail of spectators behind him as he approached.

“Hazza!” Louis had hollered from behind him. Harry had simply sped up. “Wait a second, Haz! Harry!”

They had the attention of most of the living room, but Harry hadn’t cared in the slightest. They had been too sloshed to remember any of it in the morning, anyway. And right then, he had been so pissed that it didn’t matter to him who saw him. Ed’s group had all stopped singing, including Ed himself, who continued to quietly strum the tune as he took in Harry, angry and armed with a duffel bag, approaching him determinedly, ignoring Louis. Nobody turned the music down, but everyone was listening.

Harry had marched to a stop in front of him. “Ed, can we go?”

Ed had regarded him cautiously. As a rule, Ed was even more chilled out than Harry, so him showing any emotion other than smirking nonchalance was a big deal. “Go where?” he had asked.

“Anywhere,” Harry had said. 

“Harry!” Louis stumbled into him and they nearly fell, but Harry locked his limbs and stayed upright, clenching his teeth, but otherwise pretending Louis didn’t exist.

Ed had watched this exchange with a swift curiosity. It was still early for Ed to be drinking, so he hadn’t had the same problem the rest of the guests were having. He had understood immediately. Harry had locked eyes with him and said, “I don’t care as long as we leave.” 

Ed had nodded at the duffel bag. “You spending the night?”

“The next several.” He had said it louder, so everyone within a few feet could hear, but especially Louis behind him. “Longer, if you’ll let me.”

Ed had given him a look that clearly said Harry would be telling him everything once they were in the car. Harry had given a single nod of promise, and Ed had gotten to his feet, guitar in one hand, and stepped over everyone’s head to get out. “I’m parked down the hill.”

“The jeep?” Harry had asked, feeling slightly relieved at how quickly that had been decided. 

“Yep.” Ed had stepped out in front of him and started to lead him outside. Harry took one step before Louis was tugging at the shoulder of his shirt. 

“Harry,” he begged, trying to get him to turn around. Harry had, regretting the choice because he had thought it would be harder to leave if he had to look at Louis. And maybe it would have been if Louis had looked contrite or apologetic or even just slightly in love back with him. But Louis was swaying on the spot, his eyes bloodshot and squinty, and any guilt Harry might have felt had been chased away by irritation and conviction that leaving was in the best interest for self-preservation. Harry had been ninety percent sure Louis still didn’t know what was happening.

Harry had tried to think of the perfect line, something witty and clever that would have made it into a trailer if that had been a movie. He had tried to think of something cold and hateful that might have made Louis hurt through his liquor haze. He had tried to just open his mouth and repeat  _ I’m leaving. Goodbye _ . But the words hadn’t come, and his mouth wouldn’t open, and the bridge of his nose had tingled with tears, so he had simply turned around to where Ed was waiting a few feet ahead and walked past everyone to catch up to him. 

Louis hadn’t called out for him again, but Harry could feel his eyes follow him all the way out the front door.

  
  
  


As if he was reading Harry’s mind, Louis burst into tears on cue back in the present. Harry unthinkingly wrapped both arms around Louis’s shoulders and pulled him in close against his chest. 

“Should we talk?” Harry asked, nuzzling his chin into Louis’s messy auburn Beatles-style hair to stop his own crying. 

Louis shuddered at the long-awaited contact, nuzzling his own face into Harry’s white v-neck. “No.”

“Okay.”

“What happened to us, Hazza?”

_ I fell in love with you and realized I could never have you. _ “I dunno.”

“Why aren’t we even friends anymore?”

How could such a simple question be so poignant? Harry lost it. “We fucked up, Lou,” he choked.

“Yeah, we did.” He tightened his grip in Harry with a desperate fervor. “I’m  _ so _ sorry. For everything I did. I thought I’d always have you and when I didn’t…” a sob rips through him. “I didn’t. I don’t know how.”

Harry nodded along with his fractured sentences because he understood them completely. “You’ll always have me,” he breathed. And it was true, because Louis could always have every bit of Harry he wanted, and Harry would always give. Even after a year of icyness and space, Harry’s racing heart was still ready to burst from love and want. 

“I miss you.”

“I miss  _ us _ .”

“That, too.”

They had a good cry for a few minutes, clinging to each other’s torsos and reconnecting in a way they both thought they had lost forever. When they calmed down a bit, Louis spoke.

“Harry, I don’t want the band to dissolve.” He sounded like a child in a different way than he usually did.

“We aren’t even a band anymore, Lou ,” Harry reasoned.

“But we  _ are _ ,” Louis argued. “Maybe… maybe not emotionally, but we’re still under contract. I mean… this is my  _ career.  _ I’m going to lose my job, and it’s the only job I’ve ever been able to keep. Once it’s done… I’ll just be back in the unemployment line.”

“You know that’s not true. First off, we could write and produce for other artists. We know the trade. Second, even if we  _ don’t _ do anything, we’ll make enough in royalties and endorsements to last the next ten years.” He knew better than to bring up settling down, couldn’t bear the thought of Louis spitting on his deepest dreams yet again. “And who knows? Maybe by then, we’ll all be in a place where we want to get together for a reunion tour. ‘Til then, we just have to watch our savings and be careful with money.”

Louis chuckled, shuddering through a leftover sob. “You know me, Harry, I’m rubbish with saving money.”

“Well, then, just downsize. Be more conservative with water and electricity.” He paused. “Split the bills.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

“A roommate.”

Louis tilted his head up, not daring to hope Harry meant what Louis thought he meant.

“Are you saying…?”

“Yes.” Harry looked Louis dead in the eye, a smile crawling across his cheeks. He was gone for this boy. And if Louis would take him back, he’d come crawling. He always would.

And Louis, it seemed, would have him. Judging by the return smile lighting his face, it was all Louis could do not to jump around and cheer. He settled for squeezing Harry half to death and kissing him sloppily on the cheek. Harry wiped it off with the back of his hand, grinning under a blush. 

“We’ll have to sell one of the flats,” Harry said, all business. “I vote the one in London. I know that’s your home and all, but if we don’t need to be near the studio any more, we would be better off selling it. It’s so much more expensive, and our entire social circle is in LA.” He fluffed Louis’s hair. “But we do have some time to think it over.”

Louis wasn’t even listening anymore. Harry was coming home: for all he cared, home could be a tent on a Russian ice shelf. “Oh, Hazza,” he said, crying again, “thank you.”

It was Harry’s turn to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank  _ you. _ ”

“Think we can be best mates again?”

“Only if you can lay off the public bromance stuff a little. It’s too saccharine and it makes me uncomfortable.”  _ And it just reminds me of what I can’t have. It makes me want you in a way that suffocates me. _

Louis pats his cheek with fondness. “You got it, sunshine.”

They gazed down at the pavement squatting lazily beneath them.

“Can we really handle the band breaking up?” Louis asked in a frightened whisper.

Harry squeezed him. “We’ll get through it together.”

And just like that, they both knew they would.


	9. Dissolution Drama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst that explodes into violence. Threats from Simon. Zayn is not doing well.

Liam had been the only one at mic-up on time. Niall wandered in with Paul a few minutes after, and Harry and Louis had been escorted in last-minute by a team of seven security guards in bright yellow “Today Show” ponchos. 

“I told you we could get here without setting anything on fire,” Louis snapped at them. They stood in the doorway dubiously, like they didn’t trust Louis to not spontaneously combust until he was onstage. Harry slung his arm around Louis and pulled him over to the techies. Louis’s irritation seemed to evaporate at Harry’s touch, and he beamed, throwing his own arm around Harry. Well, at least  _ they _ seemed to be getting on alright. Niall could feel Liam lobbing glances in his direction, but Niall emphatically watched the techie wind the mic’s wire around the length of his neck and torso. His walk hadn’t helped him to do anything except bawl like a baby, and Paul had sat with him, folded him in a loose embrace, let him cry.

“Anyone seen Zayn?” Erik asked, barreling into the room. 

The four boys winced at the mention of Zayn. Their strained silence didn’t go unnoticed. 

“Where is he?” Paul asked sternly, holding back a sigh. 

No one answered, all of them pointedly staring off into the air.

“Li?” Paul rounded on him, knowing that Liam, the band’s father-figure, was the one most likely to answer. “Where’s Zayn?”

Liam shrugged, eyes pogoing back and forth between his feet and Paul’s unyielding face. “Dunno.”

“He didn’t exactly tell us,” Harry popped in. “He just… sort of…”

“Blasted out of the room, didn’t he?” Louis took over. “A right madman, he was. If you find him, bring a bat.”

“He’s right here,” a grim voice spoke.

The security guys at the door parted to allow Zayn, being steered by none other than Simon Cowell. Simon looked ready to slit someone’s throat, but managed to do so in that professional manner that management was so good at. Niall quivered at the sight of him. He was piercing Niall with a homicidal look, and the force of it was almost knocking him over.

“Go get mic-ed,” Simon directed Zayn without withdrawing his glare. “Niall, I’d like to speak to you outside for a second.” It wasn’t a request.

Harry moved until he and Niall were brushing shoulders, a half step in front of him like a shield. The man who was hooking his mic up squawked in protest, getting dragged along with him. Simon spared him a fleeting look of surprise, before returning to Niall, clearly trying to bully him through intimidation. 

“We’re about to go onstage,” Harry defended firmly. “We’ll talk later.”

“Trust me, this’ll be brief,” Simon spat. “I just need to correct some of Niall’s inaccurate beliefs about what he can and can’t do.”

“We know our rights,” Harry went on. Simon still stayed eyes-on Niall, and Harry clapped loudly to draw his attention. “Look at me when I’m talking.”

That did it. Simon’s entire body turned to Harry, eyebrows arched in disbelief. “You wanna stay out of this, Styles?”

“No, thanks,” he said facetiously. He crossed his arms across his chest. “I’m cool right here.”

“Can we not do this right now?” Liam pleaded. “It’s nerve-wracking enough.”

Jeremy stuck his head in. “Five minutes guys,” he warned. “We gotta get you out onstage.”

Liam left the room first, walking through the wall of imposing men briskly. Louis hopped over to flank Niall on the opposite side of Harry, and the three of them walked out with elbows bumping. Zayn trailed after. 

“Zayn is a tattletale,” Louis singsonged, the minute they were in the hallway. “Zayn is a tattletale.”

“Shut the fuck up, Louis!” Zayn barked, shoving Louis from behind so that he stumbled. 

“Hey, hey!” Liam exclaimed, stopping to spin around. 

Before he could do anything to diffuse the situation, Harry spun around and swung his fist at Zayn, connecting with a fleshy thump. 

Zayn staggered backwards, cradling his jaw in his hand, stunned. Niall and Louis’s eyes widened hugely, staring down at Zayn’s hunched form. Liam was gaping at Harry, who stood frozen with his fists in the air, looking more surprised than any of them. He was practically a different person today, his usual stance of not getting involved or worked up totally gone. Faced with emotional disaster, Harry was suddenly a force to be reckoned with. 

Zayn removed his hand and rotated his jaw experimentally. It popped, and he cringed in pain, vengeful expression shadowing his face. Liam saw what was coming, and he stood in front of Harry with outstretched arms.

“Zayn,” he began cautiously, but Zayn released a silly sounding war-cry and charged forward, connecting with Liam so hard his body slammed back against Harry’s and Zayn was able to wrap his arms around them both and tackle them at the waist. 

“Whoa!” Louis shouted, diving in to separate the boys, punching each other wildly and without any real aim around Liam, who was attempting to use his body to block them from each other. He was leaning up into Zayn, trying to grab his fists and shove him off, but Zayn was leaning all his weight down onto him and moving his fists too quickly for Liam to grab hold. Louis was trying to squeeze into the space between Liam and Harry, trying to use his own body to cage himself around Harry, who was flailing his hands to get at Zayn, all of them shouting over each other belligerently.

“ _ Paul! _ ” Niall shrieked, because he didn’t know what else to do, because there wasn’t anything else he  _ could _ do. Within seconds, Paul, Erik, Drew, and the Today Show security escort had descended upon them, yanking the boys roughly off of each other, Harry and Zayn still shouting threats and obscenities at each other.

“EVERYONE SHUT UP!” Paul thundered. But for once, no one complied. Louis was pushing against Harry’s chest, sputtering “Harry, Harry, hey, look at me,” over Harry’s shout of “Keep that psycho on a leash!”

“Let me go! I’m gonna fuck him up!” Zayn shouted back, two security guards struggling to hold him at bay. 

Niall went over to Liam, who jerked out of Erik’s grasp haughtily. “Are you alright?” he asked, face and voice and posture dripping in concern. 

Liam nodded and straightened his clothes. “How’s my hair?” He turned his head to either side so Niall could inspect it.

“Messy,” Niall admitted, clumsily trying to make sense of the curls with his lumbering fingers. Liam batted his hands away after a minute.

“It’s always messy,” he resigned with a drained sigh. “Come on, or we’re gonna miss our cue.”

Niall laughed unsmilingly. “We’re  _ gonna _ miss our cue.”

“Let’s not make it any worse.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted “Thirty seconds!” at the fracas before he dashed up the hallway toward the door to the plaza. Niall followed after, not waiting for the others. 

Presumably, they all managed to get control of themselves, because all five of them ended up crowded at the tinted, soundproof door in time for cue. Jeremy appraised them, and lifted a hand, five fingers lifted to the sky. Four fingers. Three. Two.

One finger pointed to the door, which was flung open, the screams assailing their ears as the instrumental intro of their latest single swelled to fill the plaza. The man holding the door open passed each boy a handheld microphone as they sprinted past him out to the stage, Liam rushing up the steps first, followed by Niall, Zayn, Harry, and Louis, who eschewed the stairs in favor of leaping up on the platform flat footed. Niall shook his head. _ Show off. _

They spread out along the familiar T shape.

“New York City, make some noise!” Liam commanded. The fans returned with all they had. Niall grinned for their benefit, but the lack of enthusiasm he felt for being on stage for the first time since the end of April disturbed him, and his head was so full of havoc that he could barely remember the lyrics. Never had he been so grateful to only sing back-up harmonies. 

Somehow, they managed to put on a convincingly cordial front, feigning their typical banter so believably that the fans were clapping and stomping and singing along in tuneless delight, not suspecting at all that World War Three had just happened backstage. Harry even managed to sing a line with his elbow resting on Zayn’s shoulder without opposition. Four songs, three commercial breaks, and a handful of interview questions no one could hear later, the boys shouted their “thank you”s, and jogged back inside. 

Niall remembered the first time they had come to the US and performed on The Today Show, how they’d left the stage with such reluctance, stars in their eyes and throats clogged with incredulity at how big, how  _ loud _ the crowd had been in a country they had never visited before. Zayn hadn’t been able to stop exclaiming, “Holy shit, guys! Holy shit!” long enough to catch his breath while Harry, with Louis perched elatedly on his back, ran circles around the jumping and whooping and chest bumping Liam and Niall. 

It was such a contrast to the grave, sullen way they funeral marched down the hall now, silent and carefully not touching each other. 

For the most part not touching each other, anyway: Louis tugged on a lock of Harry’s curly fringe, and Harry grinned up at him. 

They walked into the tech room to remove their mic sets and in-ears, but there wasn’t a techie in sight. There were only four people in the room: Simon was leaning dauntingly in a chair, Paul standing directly behind him, Drew and Erik standing at his sides. 

“Take them off and go back to the green room,” Simon instructed coldly. “Niall, stay here.”

Harry was back in sentry mode immediately; he took a resolute step forward. “We need to talk.”

“Oh, we’ll talk later, Styles, don’t worry,” Simon growled. 

“I mean  _ all _ of we.” Harry tilted his head to include his bandmates. Louis stepped up to stand beside Harry in unity. Niall and Liam stepped forward, too, Liam with only the slightest hesitation.

Simon took the four of them in, scrutinizing them so thoroughly Niall suspected he could have told them the color of their auras. “Talk, then,” he snarled after a few beats of anxious silence.

“We’re choosing to dissolve the band.” Liam. Niall turned his head to see him biting his lip, brow furrowed, but eyes certain. He knew what he was saying, and he knew it was what he wanted. It was the first non-ambivalent response to the break-up he’d shown them.

“And this is all because some fangirl popped Niall’s cherry?” Simon sneered. 

Niall flushed, affronted – that was a word, right? – but it was Harry who said evenly, “This has nothing to do with Niall. If anything, Niall deserves some credit for being the only one with the balls to do what we should have done a long time ago.”

“And what is that exactly? Bite the hand that feeds you? Break the hearts of a few milLin dedicated girls? You’re rich and famous and universally adored. Your lives are so hard.” He dramatically put the back of his hand to his forehead. “How do you manage?”

Simon’s harassment didn’t faze Harry at all. “We don’t,” he said. “That’s our problem.”

“Is that  _ your _ problem, Zayn?” 

Zayn also took a step forward, but left a noticeable gap between himself and the others. “No. I don’t have a problem.”

Simon tsked. “Well, if you don’t have everyone’s consent, you can’t dissolve the band.”

Harry smirked. “The contract defined a dissolution as three members leaving. The majority. We have,” he stood on his tiptoes and counted down the line, “one, two, three,  _ four _ members that want to leave.” Harry tapped his temple exaggeratedly. “That’s at least three, right, Lou?”

“I’m pretty sure it is, Haz,” Louis played along. “In fact, I think it’s even  _ more _ than three!”

“Guys,” Liam reproached. 

“Soz, Payno,” Louis apologized brightly, not sounding sorry in the least.

Simon zeroed in on Liam. “Liam, you don’t sound too sure of yourself. Do you  _ really _ want to disappoint all the fans that have never disappointed you?”

Liam cringed. Their fans had never failed to get them to number one or win them awards or sell out tours. “I am sure,” he said, forcing himself to think of Danielle and only Danielle, who had never failed to be exactly what he needed exactly when he needed it. “We’re not gonna split up until after the tour, so no one is going to be disappointed.”

“I don’t think you boys understand this,” Simon snapped. “We’re not going to  _ let you _ split up. If that means extending the tour for the rest of your lives, then so be it.”

“You aren’t allowed to add appearances after the decided upon date of dissolution,” Harry recited. Simon narrowed his eyes.

“You seem to remember this contract pretty well,” he accused.

“I didn’t like the contract,” Harry answered. “I remembered everything that could get me out of it.”

None of the boys would ever have guessed that serene, unflappable Harry would be the spokesperson for them against management. Liam usually handled things like this, and he would always buckle under the pressure when it got this heavy. Harry was like a mountain in a breeze.

“Well, I don’t remember us deciding on a date, so-”

“February seventeenth of next year,” Harry said, naming the day after the last show of the tour. He teased his phone out of his baggy shorts’ pocket. “Did you get that, Marion?”

Marion was the boys’ lawyer. Simon paled. “You called Marion?”

“Got his voicemail,” Harry explained. “But it’s been on speaker. That’s all, Marion. Call me later.” He pressed the end button and holstered the phone.

Simon stared at them. Niall looked up at Paul, who looked almost betrayed. Paul raised an eyebrow, wanting to know why Niall hadn’t told him that morning. Niall’s eyes softened with guilt, and he shrugged one shoulder apologetically. 

“Well,” Simon stuttered finally. “There’s really nothing more to say, is there?”

Harry shook his head. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Go wait in the greenroom until the car gets here,” Simon said, deflating. “Paul, walk them back.”

Paul held open the door and jerked his head. “Let’s go, guys,” he gruffed. 

Zayn stayed behind in the room. 

“Jesus, Harry,” Louis breathed as they walked down the hallway. “Where the hell did that come from?” Louis flung himself across Harry’s shoulders. Harry stopped to let him climb on, and he carried him to the greenroom.

Harry grinned. “I really have no idea,” he admitted, lifting his hand. “Look at this! I’m still shaking!”

Liam grinned back, and Niall laughed. 

“I can’t believe you thought to call Marion!” said Liam.

“I actually didn’t,” Harry told them, eyes zeroed in on the floor in front of him. “I just wanted to scare Simon. I’ll call him when we get to the greenroom.”

Paul was walking ahead of them, pointedly ignoring the conversation, back to the four of them. 

“Paul, you okay?” Liam asked tentatively. 

“Why shouldn’t I be?” He spoke without turning.

That wasn’t an answer, but the boys dropped it. Niall was pretty sure he was gonna feel residual guilt from the last 24 hours for the rest of his life.

Paul pulled the door open.

“Gimme your mics,” he said, holding his hand out for them. They all untangled themselves from the wires and headsets with some effort, placing them carefully in Paul’s unnaturally expansive mitts. Harry charged into the greenroom and fell onto the couch with Louis still on his back, trapping him. Louis yelped and flailed in protest from beneath him. Liam tugged Niall off to the side before they went in. 

“Hey,” Liam began. “Look-”

“Li, I’m so sorry,” he blurted out. “About yesterday, and then today, and-”

“Niall, I’m not here to yell at you.” He put up both hands to stop him. “We both did things we’re not proud of. I should have been there for you all these months and I wasn’t. I’m sorry too.”

Niall had never once blamed Liam for not sticking up for him. The last year had been hard on all of them, and they all had to deal with it in whatever ways worked for them. “Me, too,” he said superfluously. 

“I know,” Liam laughed, and Niall grinned, only feeling minimally stupid. “I was gonna say you and I obviously have a lot to talk about. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here to listen. You know that. And no matter what you say, you can trust me. You know everything about me, and you still don’t hate me, so I can’t imagine that knowing everything about  _ you _ will change my mind, either.” He clasped a hand on Niall’s shoulder. “Maybe you don’t believe it, Niall, but you’re my best friend. And no one could ever take that from me. Not even you.” 

Niall swallowed hard, on the verge of tears. Of course it was true that any dam in their friendship had always been a direct result of Niall’s secrets and Niall’s insecurities and Niall’s distrust. Liam was an arms-out, heart-on-his-sleeve type of person. He was an open book who never thought badly of anyone, and if Niall wasn’t able to trust someone like Liam, he had only himself to blame.

“Thank you, Li,” he murmured with a sniff. He clasped Liam on the opposite shoulder. 

“Any time,” Liam assured him sincerely. “You know, Danielle is flying over when we get to the west coast shows next month. Maybe you can fly Hayley over and we can all hang out. Do a double date or something?”

Niall smiled and said, “That sounds great,” because it did. Hayley would love that. He imagined the flash of fangirl in her eyes at the thought of meeting Liam.

“I gotta call her back,” Liam said as though just remembering. “Poor thing’s been awake all this time so we could talk.” He whipped his phone out of his pocket and held it to his ear, following Niall into the greenroom. Paul slammed the door behind them. Niall flinched. 

“I should talk to him,” he said. Harry and Louis were still wrestling on the couch. Liam waved for him to go after Paul.

“You two are closest. It’ll be best coming- did I wake you, love?” He cupped his hand around the receiver and went to his default spot on the windowsill. 

_ You two are closest. _ Niall had never thought about it, but he supposed that was true: Paul was closer to Niall than to any of the others. Paul always cared about him, even when Niall was too distracted by his own angsty head to notice. And Liam had never stopped caring, either. Maybe Niall had never been as alone as he felt…

He would think about it later. Niall took a deep breath and left to find Paul.


	10. Car Calls Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Louis is a little shit, and I love him.

It was almost two hours before the car came to pick them up, and Louis was none too pleased about it.

“We need to eat!” he complained as he climbed into the van. It was set up different than yesterday’s, with the middle bench turned backwards to face the back one. Zayn was already inside, curled into a far corner with his eyes closed and his headphones on loud enough for them to hear every word of the music. “We didn’t have any breakfast and now we won’t get any lunch!”

“We have hours to eat yet,” Liam pointed out. “The radio set isn’t til three.”

Harry slid into the middle bench, climbing over Liam to sit next to Louis just like old times, leaving Niall to sit on the same bench as Zayn. He sank into the seat carefully, staying as far to the side and snicking the door closed as quietly as possible. Waking Zayn up was a death sentence already without the added hostility of being the one to break the band up. Liam noticed his unease.

“Switch with me,” he offered, rising to exchange places with Niall. Niall settled in next to Harry.

“Z100 never feeds us,” Louis went on.

“We aren’t getting interviewed by Z100,” Liam told him as the driver and Paul got into the front seats on the other side of the separation glass. “It’s that 96 whatever station that gave us pizza last time.”

Harry frowned. “I’m pretty sure it’s Z100?”

“Nah, they’re sponsoring the secret show tonight. That’s what you’re thinking.” 

The car rumbled to life, and the driver pulled jerkily away from the curb. The boys all braced their hands against something so they wouldn’t fall out of their seats. Zayn didn’t move at all.

“The only reason we got pizza last time was because it was our first time being interviewed by them,” Louis argued. “I may have to just pull a Niall and run off to find a sandwich and true love.”

Niall couldn’t tell how much of it was a joke and how much of it was actual irascibility. It sounded light, but Louis wouldn’t look at him when he said it.

“With that face, you’ll be lucky to get the sandwich,” Harry said, pulling his phone out. 

“This from you, pretty boy!” Louis replied.

“We’re still trending,” Liam reported, holding up his phone to verify. The three of them crowded in to see the trend topics. 

“Why isn’t that showing up on mine?” Harry asked with a frown, holding up his own screen for Liam to squint at.

“I’m set to domestic,” Liam explained, tapping it with one finger. “You’re on worldwide. We were trending worldwide til about eleven.”

Eleven? “What time is it?” Niall asked, pulling out his own phone. 12:10. Shit. How long was Hayley on break for? He dug around in his front pocket, hoping he remembered to move Hayley’s number when he’d gotten changed that morning.

“If you scroll through your mentions, they probably sent us pictures of the trends,” Liam continued. “They were on about Zayn’s top.”

“What was wrong with it?” Louis was resting his chin on Harry’s shoulder so he could watch him scroll.

“It was so tight they could see his abs. According to Twitter, the fanbase sustained mass amounts of ovary casualties.”

Niall listened to the phone ring with his fingers crossed. A lunch break had to be longer than ten minutes, right?

“I’ve never understood that. Why do their ovaries explode when we do something sexy?” Louis asked curiously. 

“Hormones,” was Harry’s one word answer. “Yeah look at that,  _ Zayn’s Abs _ trending right above  _ ovaries _ .”

“But estrogen doesn’t come from ovaries, does it?”

“Do I look like a biology teacher?”

Hayley picked up on the last ring. “Hello?”

Niall blew out a breath. His heart was racing and his stomach was tumbling in cheery nervousness at the sound of her voice. He remembered the way she looked at him on the bed this morning, all happy and satisfied and in love, and he felt giddy. He was talking to Hayley, and she was  _ his _ Hayley. “Oh, hi. Hey. It’s, uh, me.” He was horrible at phone conversations. He never knew what to say. And he knew what to say even less to Hayley on the phone. 

“Hi, Me.” He could hear her smile, and he felt a little less nervous. “How’d the performance go?”

A mental gif of Harry punching Zayn, then Zayn taking down he and Liam in retaliation played in his head. “We sounded good,” he said, shaking it away. “The fans seemed to enjoy it.”

“And you?” she questioned knowingly. She was too good at reading him, even when she couldn’t see him. He half frowned.

“I’m in the car right now.” It was his way of saying he couldn’t talk about anything serious until later, but that he did have something to say.

“Gotcha.”

“Who is it?” Liam asked. Harry and Louis had also looked up from Harry’s phone to watch him. Niall blushed at being the center of attention.

“It’s Hayley,” he told them. 

“Oooooooh, Haaaaayley,” Louis said in a loud falsetto. “It’s Haaaaaaaayley, Harry. Haaaaaayley.”

“Haaaaayley,” Harry joined in, batting his eyelashes theatrically. “Is it Haaaaaaayley?”

“It’s  _ Haaaaaaaaayley _ !”

“Ooh, Haaaaaaaaaaaayley!”

“Is that Louis?” Hayley giggled. 

“Yes,” Niall said, his blush deepening.

On cue, Louis leaned across Harry and went “Hellooooo Haaaaaaaaayley!” into the receiver. Niall covered it with his hand a moment too late.

“Go away, Louis!” He swatted him back.

“But it’s Haaaaaaaaaaaaaayley!”

Harry thunked him on the head. “Shush.”

“Do you wanna just call me back?” She offered, laughing at Louis’s “Ouch!”

He did  _ not _ want to call her back. He wanted to ask the driver to pull the car over and let him out so he could walk to the station and get ten minutes of alone time with his girlfriend-

He frowned. Was it sad that he was thinking of a phone call as ‘alone time’? Liam probably would say no, that it was totally normal, and he was going to have to get used to it. 

“Niall?”

“I guess I probably should,” he conceded begrudgingly. “What time do you get off work?”

“At three. I have class at four, but you can call me any time between then.”

She sounded so hopeful, it was gut-wrenching. “That’s not gonna work,” he said, mouth quirking down on one side. “We have a radio thing at three.”

“Ah.” She was quiet for a minute. “I get done with classes at 8:30.”

“The secret show tonight’s at 8. It’ll probably get done with around ten. We could maybe meet somewhere? Do you know any late-night places that would be open?”

“Yeah, but they’re all in real high tourist-y areas.”

“I mean, there’d be less people that late. It might not be so bad.”

“I don’t want to risk it. You can always just come over my place?”

“I don’t remember how to get there,” he confessed sheepishly. He was acutely aware of his bandmates bearing witness to his fumbling attempt at organization, and was simultaneously struck for the first time with just how difficult this relationship was gonna be. “When does your first class get done with? I could call before the second one.”

Liam snapped twice to get his attention.

“Hang on,” he told her, covering the receiver again. “What?”

“Invite her to the show tonight,” Liam dispensed expertly. 

Niall hadn’t even thought of that. “She has classes, though.”

“Tell her to skip.”

“But she skipped work yesterday, she’s not gonna want to skip again.”

Liam fought a smile. “A Directioner isn’t gonna want to skip school to go to a VIP One Direction show as the plus one of her band member boyfriend?” he shook his head skeptically. “Tell her to skip.”

He removed his hand. “Hey, Hayley?”

“Oooh, Haaaaaaaaaaayley!”

“Yes?” she asked.

“Do you wanna just… come to the show tonight?”

“To the Z100 Secret Show?” She asked after a shell-shocked minute.

“Yeah. I can… send a car to pick you up?” he said it like a question, looking at Liam, who nodded encouragingly. “Yeah. I can send a car to get you at six and bring you over.”

“Oh my God,” she muttered. “Oh my God. An actual Secret Show. Oh my God.” She laughed breathlessly. “Sorry. It’s just, Secret Shows are like… to actually  _ go _ … this is such a big deal.”

Niall burst out laughing. “And here I thought dating a member of One Direction was a big deal.”

The line went silent again, and Niall worried he had said something wrong. 

“Hayley?”

“ _ Haaaaaaaaaayley! _ ”

“Holy crap,” she breathed. “Niall. I’m dating a member of One Direction.”

Niall smiled. “Yes, you are.”

“Is this real life?” she demanded.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” Niall nodded. “Usually my dreams have more food.”

“Mine, too!” Louis shouted suddenly. “Oi! Paul!” he banged on the divider. “I need food!”

“So I’ll call you when the car’s on its way,” Niall said.

“Sounds good. I miss you.”

Something fuzzy tingled up his spine. “I miss you, too,” he said quietly.

“Awwwwwwww,” Louis cooed.

He kissed into the phone the way he’d seen Liam do a million times. “Bye, love.”

“Bye.” She kissed back and the line went dead. Niall stored her number as a contact, unable to wipe the lovestruck smile off his face, cheeks painted pink all the way to his hairline. 

“Aw, look how cute he looks,” Liam said fondly. 

“We don’t wanna hear it, Li,” Harry muttered. “You look like that every time someone says Danielle’s name.”

“Daaaaaaanieeeeeeeelle!”

“It doesn’t work as well with Danielle,” Harry said with a solemn posh accent.

“I quite agree,” Louis returned in an equally posh one.

Much to Louis’s relief, Liam’s prediction that the radio station would provide them with pizza turned out to be accurate, and the group spent the two hours before the interview relaxing in the station’s conference room. Zayn did not stay in the conference room with the others, however: he brought his plateful of pizza into the studio to sit and listen to the call-in show. The rest of them scarfed their way through three pies without him, including a vegan one specially included for Liam. 

The atmosphere of the room was fairly confusing: it was less strained than usual, but only because at a personal level, everyone was less tense. Liam and Niall were talking alright, and Harry and Louis were being the old Harry and Louis, but while Harry and Liam could be front-men cordial to each other, their conversations were brief and a bit awkward, like they knew they wouldn’t be talking to each other if the topic wasn’t something about the band. Louis didn’t say anything directly to Niall  _ or _ Liam, and Niall didn’t say much of anything to him or Harry, just throwing them teetering looks every now and then that they returned when they thought he wasn’t looking. 

“So tell me about her,” Liam prompted after the pizza was gone.

Niall tried to hide his silly smile. “Well, she’s a lovely person. Sweet and smiley.”

“Like you?” Liam tousled his hair in a fondly condescending manner. Niall swatted his hands away, blushing.

“She’s better than I am,” he grunted. “She actually cares about other people.”

“You do, too,” objected Liam. “You care about people more than anyone I know.”

“I  _ care _ ,” Niall explained. “She actually does something about it. And the way she watches me when I talk, it’s like… like she’s  _ really listening _ . It’s nice. And her smile makes me feel… I dunno. Relevant. Important. Special.” He ducked, picking at his fingernails in an attempt to hide his flushed cheeks. 

Liam didn’t say anything, so Niall chanced a glance up at him. His eyes were soft, expression strangely apologetic.

“And of course you like that,” he murmured. Niall read the  _ I’m sorry for never giving that to you _ in the slump of his shoulders and the watery dart of his gaze.

“I love it,” Niall said with a smile that let Liam know it was okay. “I love  _ her _ .”

Liam’s face flipped from remorse to skepticism faster than Niall’s brain could follow. 

“Don’t throw that word around,” Liam reproached. 

Niall furrowed his brow. “I’m not.”

“You can’t love someone after only knowing them for a day,” Liam explained slowly.

“Psychologically, it only takes four seconds to fall in love,” Harry said across the room. He and Louis were sitting pretzel-legged on the table, folding and tearing the pizza boxes. He kept his eyes on their demolition piles, managing to ignore Liam and Niall even as he spoke to them. Liam frowned.

“Love at first sight is a thing,” Niall said, taking Liam’s attention from Harry.

“It’s not a  _ real  _ thing,” Liam said. “Love needs time to grow. You can’t know everything about a person in one day, and how can you love someone you don’t really know?”

“Romeo and Juliet fell in love when they didn’t know each other,” Niall pointed out. “Sometimes people just click. If they’re meant to be together, they  _ know _ .” 

“But Romeo and Juliet was just a story,” Liam said.

“But they were soul mates, right?”

Liam shrugged one shoulder. “I never read it.”

“Romeo and Juliet were horny teenagers and they died,” Harry put in. His eyes were firmly fixed on the box he was stabbing with a pen to make a serrated line. Louis sent him a sidelong glance as he bent at his own cardboard, carefully cataloguing every movement with caution, like he thought Harry might detonate.

Niall’s eyes narrowed. “If anyone would know about horny, it’s Harry,” he muttered. Liam winced, but neither Harry nor Louis reacted, so Niall knew they hadn’t heard. They were suddenly focused on each other, preoccupied by a mumbled conversation that made them both look sort of anxious. Niall and Liam shared a curious look, but ultimately decided not to ask.

“I’m just worried,” Liam picked up where they left off, “because most of the time when people fall in love that fast, it’s a whirlwind thing, and they fall out in a week.”

“I’m not going to fall out,” Niall stated firmly. “I’ve never fallen in love with anyone before. There’s just something about her that’s different.”

Liam bit his lip, looking split between thoughts. “Did you consider how vulnerable you were yesterday? When you met her, you were emotionally unstable. Is it possible that you met a nice, pretty girl when you were feeling extra lonely and extra self-loathing, and you attached to her because you had to?”

Niall gaped at him in disbelief. “Why are you doing this to me?” he demanded, furious. Liam was trying to plant self-doubt in his head? Some friend.

“I’m not doing anything,” Liam defended. “I just want to make sure that you aren’t doing all of this for the wrong reason. Right now, you think you’re in love, but you don’t have too much else, do you?”

“So I’m imagining being in love because I need something to get through the day?” Niall asked sarcastically.

“Are you?”

“No!” Niall hit the table harder than he meant. “Li, I know I love her. And she loves me. The end,” he said, rubbing his wrist gingerly.

Liam gave a small smile. “I just want to make sure you’ll be okay when this tour is over.”

He meant when the band was over, and the  _ thunk thunk thunk _ of Harry’s pen jabbing the cardboard ceased for a couple of seconds as they all thought about it. The realization that One Direction was really ending pushed the breath from Niall’s chest. Why wasn’t this getting any easier to think about? Breaking up was essentially his idea. How come it hurt so much?

“He’ll be okay,” Harry spoke finally. He sounded certain and steady. Niall wondered if he felt any cement in his lungs, or if he was just relieved that this nightmare was coming to an end. There was no strain in his face when he continued, “We’ll all be okay.”

And Niall knew they would be in the end. He just had doubts about the next eight months. 

After a short put painfully uneasy silence, a plain-looking lady in washed-out jeans and a floral blouse came into the room.

“Greg just sent it to commercial,” she updated with a polite smile. “You guys are on next.”

Harry was the only one who returned the smile. Louis stood up and brushed the cardboard mess to the floor with one hand, grinding it into the carpet with the sole of his shoe, willfully oblivious to the woman’s objecting sigh. Liam threw his arm around Niall’s shoulder when they stood up, reeling him in for a hug. Niall hugged back halfheartedly, which made Liam squeeze harder. 

“No hard feelings?” he pleaded into Niall’s ear. “I’m just trying to help.”

Niall chuckled. Liam probably did have the best of intentions, trying to have Niall see the potential hazards of the relationship he was getting into. “Don’t help anymore,” he accepted the apology, returning Liam’s bear embrace. 

The four of them walked single file into the studio, taking their positions around the boom mics dangling from posts at the end of the round table. Niall had to fight the familiar urge to use them as punching bags, because they were shaped like big plushy fists, and he always wondered what it would feel like on his knuckles. He knew what they felt like on the back of his head from countless studio incidents with Louis. 

The commercials played lightly in the background. The interviewer, Greg, was sitting down at the other end of the table, surrounded by computers and a stack of papers. He was pointing to the top one and talking in an undertone to the woman who’d come to fetch them. They both nodded, and Greg turned to them with a wide, charismatic smile. “There they are!” he said jovially. “Come in, come in, crowd around, it’s a little tight.”

They were already in place and there was plenty of room for everyone, but they shifted around a bit for his benefit.

“We got about two minutes before we go on air.” Greg’s voice sounded like every other American radio host’s voice, and Niall thought it was funny. He imagined them all going to the same coffee house every morning and asking for a ‘large with a shot of radio voice’. “Are there any off-limits questions that you don’t want me asking?”

That was nice of him. Usually, they weren’t extended that courtesy; it would figure that the one time they did was the one time they didn’t have anything off-limits. ‘Band dissolution’ floated around in Niall’s head, but there was really no way to say  _ we don’t want you to ask about the band breaking up _ without arousing suspicion about, well, the band breaking up. They all shook their heads after a thoughtful minute.

“Okay, cool. I’m not gonna read you all the questions,” he indicated the beastial stack of papers in front of him. “It’s just gonna be a handful of my favorites. We’ll bring in some instruments after the next commercial break and you guys can play a couple songs. Which ones were you gonna do?”

“Um, what did we decide?” Liam asked Harry. “I think we had Not The One first, then Something Like This.”

“Yeah,” Harry verified.

Greg nodded. “You’re not gonna do the new single?”

“That’s Not The One.”

“Oh. Okay. What do you need for instruments?”

“If you have some kind of hand drum for me, and then just one guitar for Liam,” Harry requested. 

“What kind of hand drum?” Greg’s assistant asked. “Bongos or something?”

“Any kind. I play electric drum pads, but if you don’t have one–”

“Actually, I think we might have one or two,” Greg said with a questioning look at the woman. She nodded.

“How many do you need?” she asked.

“Just one pad. I’ll program it on the next commercial.”

She breezed from the room with an accommodating smile. The “On-Air” sign glowed red and Greg spun his seat around. “Hey, hey, hey, what’s happening everybody?” he said into the mic. “We got One Direction here in the studio. How are you boys?”

There was the usual chorus of “hi”s and “good”s sloppily stacked over each other.

“Now, guys, I gotta tell you, our Twitter has been  _ blowing up _ all day! Everyone’s got questions. You up for some questions?”

There was a “yeah”, a “sure”, an “okay”, and a “bring it on” from Louis. Zayn still wasn’t talking.

“Well, let’s get the obvious out of the way: who’s available?”

Niall was spared having to decide how to answer by Louis’s unruly cheekiness.

“You know, that’s a really annoying question, actually,” Louis responded. “Being single doesn’t automatically make us available.”

“Okay then,” Greg said with a chuckle of surrender. “I guess that’s fair. So who’s  _ single _ ?”

“No. I’m done with this question.” Louis tossed his hair out of his eyes. “Next.”


	11. The Secret Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liam is like a professional wingman, because I always assumed that's how he'd be in real life. Lots of fluff, and some original songs, and also some Larry bromancing.

“So I was thinking,” Liam began.

Niall looked up from his phone expectantly, but the rest of Liam’s sentence was interrupted by the squeaky footfalls of Harry and Louis as they flew past the open door of the greenroom, Louis shouting, “Faster, faster!” and shoving Harry ahead down the hallway. A few seconds later, a cluster of men in Z100 security uniforms rushed past the door, chasing them.

“That can’t be good,” Liam said with a frown. “Anyway, I was thinking if you want, you can have some of my solos tonight.”

Niall drew his body in from where he was sprawled all over the couch and sat up straight to make room for Liam. “What for?” he asked, patting the cushions next to him.

Liam sank down. “Well, Hayley’s gonna be in the audience. I figured you might like her to hear you sing.”

Niall waved him off. “She’s a big fan,” he reminded him. “She knows I don’t sing in any of the songs.”

“We could change the set list a bit,” Liam suggested. “Swap out some of the new stuff with songs from the second album.”

All of them had sung quite a bit on the second album, _Out_ _ In The Rain _ , Niall’s solos being still less, but much closer to equal with the other four boys’ than on their debut record,  _ Another Way _ . The third, fourth, and fifth albums,  _ Well Past Midnight, Lost Angels, _ and  _ Us versus Them _ , inexplicably dropped his and Louis’s solo counts to even fewer than they had been on  _ Another Way _ , and this latest album,  _ Chase It, _ had pretty much been “The Harry Show featuring Liam, with guest appearances on high harmony by Zayn”. It was unfair, and had inspired fan outcry on behalf of the neglected vocalists, but as the album was still being bought and still getting great reviews, management hadn’t cared.

Niall hit the power button on his phone to wake up the screen. “Bit late to change the set list, no?” It was 7:17.

Liam lifted a blasé eyebrow. “Do you even know the set list?” 

Niall blushed, guilty as charged. “No.”

“No one else does, either. I’d just go onstage and tape new set lists over the old ones and it would be fine.”

“Do we know all the instrument parts?” It was a dumb question, because of _ course _ they knew the instrument parts. They’d only played all of their music live nonstop since it had come out.

“Even if we didn’t, we could just make something up,” Liam assured him. “All of the early songs have basically the same melody, anyway.”

Niall nodded. “True.”

“I was thinking we could even do  _ Love Me, July. _ ”

It was Niall’s turn to frown.  _ Love Me, July _ was the only song in their entire discography in which he had vocal lead and sang more than the others, and because of that, it was an iTunes presale bonus track. 

“We’ve never played that live before,” he said apprehensively. “I’m not sure we even know the words.”

“You’re the only one that has to know the verses. The rest of us know the chorus, and I’ll just take the bridge.”

Niall was still dubious, mostly because he didn’t have much experience singing solos on stage. The last live solo he could remember singing was during the actual tour for  _ Here In The Rain,  _ and that may as well have been during Ceasar’s reign. 

“Bet you ten bucks Hayley knows every word,” Liam coaxed. “And I bet another ten that she’ll love hearing you sing about keeping a spontaneous romance alive despite distance.”

Niall quickly reviewed the lyrics in his head. That was  _ exactly _ what the song was about, and  _ of course _ she would love that, because it would feel like a promise, wouldn’t it? And since they had never sung it on stage before, it would seem twice as personal to her, especially as it was  _ him _ singing the words. He smiled, suspecting that to be the bigger reason why Liam was suggesting the song. “You’re too good at this,” he told him.

“This?” Liam scratched his head.

“The boyfriend thing. You’re like a professional or something.”

Liam guffawed. “A professional boyfriend,” he mused. “I wonder what the demand is for those.”

“Probably high, but the pay is probably crap.”

“No, the pay is  _ very _ good,” Liam guaranteed him, allowing himself a cheeky smirk.

Niall laughed. “That’s the Harry-est thing I’ve ever heard you say!”

A knock on the door brought their attention to Paul’s hulking frame leaning spread across the eaves. 

“Hey, Paul,” Liam said casually. “Is everything alright?”

Paul nodded, eyes flickering down to Niall. “She seems very nice.”

Niall stared blankly.

“Your girlfriend,” Paul explained at the same time he remembered. Niall grinned.

“Hayley’s here, then?”

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayley!” Louis squealed as he and Harry sprinted past the door again, this time in the opposite direction. Paul spun around as they passed. There was another pregnant gap before security went by after them. Paul looked back at Niall and Liam with an eyebrow raised. They simply shrugged.

“Yeah, no, she’s out in the audience,” Paul explained. “Got there okay, drive back was fine. She was very polite and very friendly. She never once said ‘feels’ or ‘I can’t even’, so I like her.”

“Are you sure she’s a real fangirl?” Liam joked. “And can you help me get backstage and change our setlist?”

Paul frowned. “Are you being serious?”

“Yep.”

“Oh. Then yeah, sure. You know you guys aren’t playing instruments on the first half, right?”

Neither one of them did. Liam frowned. “What?”

“Simon decided to bring in your instrumental band for the first half, then have you guys play after intermission,” Paul recounted. 

One Direction had originally been a boy band, but after X-Factor, management decided to expand their audience appeal by having the boys play their own instruments, since boy bands still had such a stigma in the music scene. In the beginning, while they were all improving their instruments skills and abilities (Harry and Zayn at the time just learning theirs), they had an instrumental band that played while they sang. They got rid of them completely for concert by their second tour, but once in a blue moon, they would sing a song on some show, and Simon would insist on bringing the band in so One Direction could focus on the vocals. Niall couldn’t remember the last time they had played for an entire half set.

“This is punishment, isn’t it?” Liam scowled. One Direction’s distaste for their instrumental band was no secret to management. Even aside from the obvious implication of inadequacy the band’s presence on stage gave, they were also an obnoxious and uncouth foursome. 

“Almost definitely,” Paul confirmed. “You still want to change the set list?”

“Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t you go round up Louis and Harry first?” Niall asked.

Paul waved dismissively. “That’s what venue security gets paid for. Are you coming with us?”

“I’m not staying here by myself,” Niall grunted, throwing a furtive glance at Zayn’s napping form on the couch, hostile even in sleep. He really wouldn’t be by himself, but being alone with Zayn, sleeping or awake, was even worse. “I’ll just hang out backstage. You guys can find me when you’re done.”

Paul held the door open for them, and they had to duck under his arm. “Sounds good.”

Niall’s favorite place to be before a show was backstage, even though he was more often than not in the way. There was just something about the buzz of the crowd, chatting loud and excited on the other side of the closed curtain, that made his nerves go away and made him feel like he was supposed to be a performer. 

The crew was rushing around him, doing last minute checks on the instruments and sound equipment and staging. Niall watched from the wing on stage right, standing beside Kevin, Sean, Brad, and Spooner, their instrumental band. His plan had been to avoid them at all costs, but it was hard to do that when he was the only one backstage not dressed in head-to-toe black. Now he was trying his best to ignore them. But they weren’t the easiest people to ignore.

“What’s the setlist look like?” Brad asked, his New Jersey accent thick.

“I dunno,” Kevin replied in his equally thick accent. 

“Niall, what’s on the list?” Joe punched him to get his attention. Niall winced and rubbed his arm crossly.

“I’m not sure.” His accent sounded even more French in comparison to the other boys’.

Spooner laughed. “It’s his band and he don’t got a clue!”

They were stereotypes in the worst way, rude and loud and mean without even realizing their behavior was less than ideal. Niall frowned. “We’re doing a few songs from the second album,” he said, trying to prove he knew more than they did. 

“From  _ Caught In The Rain _ ?” Kevin made a face. “Why?”

“It’s  _ Out In The Rain _ ,” Niall corrected, praying for Scottie to beam these space invaders up and out of the venue. 

Liam sidled up next to Niall like a personal Superman. “Have you got your in-ears?”

Niall exhaled, grateful for the presence of a normal person. “Not yet.”

“Lem’ll know!” Joe punched Liam. “What’s the setlist look like, Lem?”

It was Liam’s turn to frown. Niall suspected the biggest reason Liam hated the band was because they still called him  _ Lem _ after four years of being asked not to. “We’re gonna open with  _ Light Me Up _ ,” he said. “Then  _ You’re My Enough,  _ then  _ Another Way- _ ”

“All from the first album?” Spooner interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“Why are we doing old songs?” Brad demanded. “Niall said we’re gonna do some songs from the second album?”

“No, you guys aren’t.  _ We’re _ gonna play all the songs from the second album.”

“How much of the set are you guys playing?” Kevin asked. 

“We’re gonna play all of the songs after we all go off for intermission. So you guys have the first twelve.”

“Hell yeah, that’s where it’s at!” Joe slapped Niall’s back unexpectedly, and Niall almost fell over.

“Christ on a bike,” he muttered, straightening his knees. 

A techie came up behind them. “Niall, where are your in-ears?”

“Up your butt,” Spooner informed him. His bandmates guffawed. The techie and Liam frowned.

Niall rolled his eyes. “I’ll go get them in.”

“I have them,” Liam said. The techie took them from Liam’s outstretched hand and secured the wires around Niall’s body. 

Harry and Louis approached, backed by a team of security chaperones. One had Louis by the collar of his shirt. 

“Three minutes!” A stagehand called, loud enough to be heard by the people on this side of the curtain, but not by the audience. “Get the band their mics!”

Someone handed a microphone to Niall, and he jiggled the power flip to make sure it worked. Kevin, Sean, Brad, and Spooner walked out to settle behind their instruments. Brad did a warm-up drumroll while Sean and Spooner tuned the guitar and bass. A few excited shrieks came up from the audience and the chatter died down, replaced by an anxious buzz of catcalls and whooping when the instruments went silent again.

“Where’s Zayn?” One of the techies shouted. “He needs his in-ears!”

“I’m here,” Zayn said, ducking around the various extras to stand near Liam. Liam shuffled away subconsciously, trying to give him space. Zayn didn’t notice, because the space was immediately filled by the techie with his in-ears, who wound the wires quickly around his torso. He lifted his arms up and avoided everyone’s eyes. Liam passed him his mic when he was done. 

“Everyone quiet!” One of the techies yelled. “Mics on in five, four, three, two, one!”

The boys flicked their mics on and Liam tapped at the top with his fingertips as a cue to lower the houselights. As they dimmed, the screams swelled louder. Brad looked to Liam, who was holding up his hand in a halting gesture, running through some kind of countdown in his head. He finally pointed one finger at Brad, and he rolled loudly into a strong, rockish beat. Kevin began to play the melody of the song and the curtain went up. The techies all moved back in the wing to give One Direction space to move. They automatically slid into order behind each other, waiting as the guitar joined the keyboard melody, then the bass. The four instruments played through the melody one time together, then cut out.

“ ** _Light me up!_** ” The boys sang acapella from offstage, their harmonies perfectly, almost habitually, winding into each other. “ _ **Like the city and the streets, with your eyes and this beat all around me!**_ ”

The music started up again and the boys raced out into place before the song’s intro could finish. Louis dashed out first, all the way across stage, Harry right behind him, Liam in the middle, Zayn to his right, and Niall at the end. 

“ _ **Running!**_ ” Liam declared. “ _ **Faster than my feet, there goes my heart down the street, but it’s stuck in my throat, cuz you’re looking at me!**_ ”

“ _ **Singing!**_ ” Harry continued. “ _ **Music as we move, dancing clumsy in their shoes, all my friends and your friends, but I’m looking at you!**_ ” He pointed to Zayn like he was passing him the lead. 

“ _ **The week’s been long, and much too hard**_ ,” Zayn sang lowly, like he was building it up. “ _ **I’m sore and tired and much too dark**_.”

“S _ **o light me up!**_ ” They all shouted together in their respective harmonies. “ _ **Brighter than the city! I don’t know you, but you’re pretty, so tell me your name! Light me up- like the streets outside, with that brightness in your eyes! My pulse beats to the rhythm of the music and I’ll never be the same!**_ ”

“ _ **So smile like you mean it,**_ ” Harry sang.

“ _ **Like you love it**_ ,” Niall sang.

“ _ **Cuz you do!**_ ” Louis sang.

“ _ **And light me up!**_ ” They all sang in unison.

As Zayn started verse two, Niall let himself scan the audience. The second half of the room was cloaked in shadow too deep to make out individual silhouettes, let alone faces, but the first ten rows were bright enough from the lights of the stage to see what the girls looked like. He searched for Hayley, spying her by her short hair in row 4. 

She was standing on the left end of the row, closest to where she knew he would be on stage. She was watching him and only him. Niall’s stomach flipped. She caught his eye and grinned. He grinned back, almost forgetting that the chorus was coming up.

He felt Liam’s eyes on him and he turned to meet them. Liam was smiling a knowing smile at him as he sang. Niall sang back at him with a nod.  _ Yes, I found her. And she’s looking at me like I’m the only one on stage.  _

He started to feel a bit nervous at that thought. He knew she was listening for his voice out of all of them, had probably already found it. If he made a mistake, she would hear, which was embarrassing to think about. He pushed the thought from his head, instead trying to use it as a reason to try harder to sing his best. Hayley had come to see  _ him _ and hear  _ him _ , so he was gonna give her something to remember. 

When the song ended, he held his last note a bit longer than usual, drawing it out along with Harry, who was notorious for holding his notes well past cut off. Harry heard Niall holding his note and he looked at him challengingly, still holding his note. Niall stared back in good natured competition, struggling to hold on to the note, his voice wobbling on it. Harry fought a smirk and put a hand on his hip as the note sustained solidly, constantly, firmly from the back of his throat. 

The band counted out of the song, playing their last notes, Kevin rolling the high-hat and Sean wiggling the whammy bar alongside Harry and Niall’s notes. Niall’s face was red from exertion when he finally cut out with a gasp. Harry lifted a fist in victory and kept the note up until the last pound of the bass drum. The fangirls shrieked in delight: stage banter starting on song number one was a rarity, but a crowd-pleaser. 

Niall straightened out as the crowd applauded raucously, looking back at Hayley, who was grinning proudly at him. She gave him a subtle thumbs-up.

“Trying to beat the master,” Harry said into his mic, walking past Liam and Zayn to Niall as the intro to the next song started up. Niall turned so they were face to face- er, neck to face. Niall stood on his tiptoes to make a joke out of it, and the crowd laughed and cheered. Harry put a hand to the top of Niall’s head and shoved him back flat-footed. “You gotta learn that you can’t beat the master!” 

He poked a finger into Niall’s chest as he sang the first line of the next song, sexy in a way that made the fangirls shriek in the audience. “ _ **Hungry, thirsty, tired, on my way, seems like there’s never enough of those stupid hours left in the day, why’s finding time for you so tough?**_ ”

Niall spent the first half of the set trying and failing to not look at Hayley, just in case someone noticed and wondered why his eyes kept returning over and over to the same girl. But he wasn’t doing a very good job of it, and if anyone  _ had _ been looking, they probably wouldn’t have missed it. He was trying as much as possible to stay in her area, but a lot of their choreography required them to move all over. Whenever his choreography didn’t require him to stay put, however, he found excuses to return to stage left. 

The lights dimmed all the way to black at the end of  _ Home Out There _ , and they sat in the darkness for a minute to the sound of applause before rising and leaving stage for half-time. Paul met them and led them into the greenroom while the intermission band started setting up for their short set.

“Lou,” Harry started as soon as they were in the hallway, “you gotta watch where you step, because you keep stomping on my foot!”

Lou snickered. “You say that like you think it was an accident!”

Harry walloped him in the head. 

“Save that for the stage,” Paul scolded. “I don’t want any more close calls, got it?”

Lou jumped up on Harry’s back and Harry staggered for a moment under his awkward length, jostling to readjust him so that he fit better. 

“Aye, aye, captain!” Lou saluted.

Zayn was the first in the room, and he made a beeline to the mini-fridge to get a water bottle. 

“Be a lad and pass one here!” Lou called, lifting his hands as if to catch one as he slid down off Harry’s back. 

Zayn ignored him, closing the mini-fridge and opening his own bottle. The small click as it snapped open sounded loud in the weighty silence. Everyone stood frozen in place uncertainly, suddenly remembering that they weren’t getting along. Zayn simply walked over to a puffy-looking armchair and sank into it, glare aimed at the floor as he chugged.

Liam cleared his throat. “So,” he began lightly, “which one was Hayley?”

Niall’s idiot smile was back. “The one in the fourth row with the short hair.”

“I didn’t see anyone with short hair,” Harry said. He tossed Lou a water bottle as Lou crash landed on the couch. He brought over three, handing one to Niall and one to Liam with a cordial nod, but no smile. Niall wasn’t sure what to do about the tension between the two pairs of best friends. He wasn’t even sure what the tension  _ was _ , if he was being honest. “I mean, I wasn’t really looking, but short hair usually sticks out in a crowd of girls.”

“It’s not super short,” Niall explained, taking a swig of the ice cold water. It made his teeth ache and he shuddered. “It’s a little past her chin. No bangs.”

“Blonde?” Liam asked.

“Darkish blonde, yeah.”

“I might’ve seen her, then,” he said. “I’ll have to get a better look when we go back out.”

The rest of the break was spent chugging water bottles, the only sounds being the snick of the caps opening and their heavy breathing as they pulled their mouths away. They trudged back into the wings, turned their mics back on, and marched back out to applause. 

The curtain stayed open while they adjusted the instruments and mic stands. Lou kneeled down to unlock the wheels on the keyboard, wiggling it a bit to make sure it was operable with a wicked grin. Niall fought a groan, knowing Lou would be chasing him with it before the first song was over. 

Zayn was on the other side of the stage, tuning his bass and adjusting his mic stand to appropriate height. Niall didn’t know why he bothered with the mic stand, because he never stayed with it anyway. They all had head mics and preferred to run around– not that Louis gave any of them much of a chance to stay still. 

A couple of techies were helping Harry lash the six-pad electric drum to himself, attaching the shoulder straps to the waist strap and tightening it. Another techie came over to help with his head-mic. He also handed head-mics to Niall and Liam, who put them on themselves in between tuning their guitars. 

The girls were watching them eagerly, screaming everything from a simple “whoooo!” to “ _Harry, I want to have your babies!_ ” Harry looked in the direction of the screamer and winked. The room raised a scream of elation. Liam looked around at his band mates, getting a nod from each of them. 

“Are we ready to go, then?” He asked into his mic unnecessarily. 

One lone fangirl screamed, “Yes!” and everyone laughed and cheered. 

Liam pretended to look offended. “Listen to them!” he said, looking from boy to boy.

“I know, mate,” Louis said. “Rude, innit?”

“Very rude,” Liam asserted. He shook his head and put his fingers on the proper strings for the first chord, but Harry stopped him.

“Hang on, Li.” He sent his most smoldering look out to the crowd. “I think we should teach them some manners. Now when you want something from someone, you say…?”

“Sleep with me!” one of them shrieked. The rest shouted out in agreement.

Harry sighed heavily, sounding far too amused to be taken seriously. “That is  _ not _ what they teach you in preschool.”

“Teach  _ me _ a lesson, Harry!” Someone screamed suggestively, causing everyone else to scream in confirmation.

“It’s useless, Hazza, let’s just play,” Louis decided, curling his fingers on the appropriate keys, poised to play the first notes.

“Oh, fine,” Harry relented. “What’s up first, Li?”

“Well,” started Liam, “I was thinking we could start off with something a little on the slow side.”

“Mm, something  _ romantic _ ?” Harry said it casually, but with a troublemaker’s smirk, and the girls screeched in approval. 

“You know, Niall, I haven’t heard much of you tonight,” Liam looked implicitly at Niall, who was starting to feel the nerves, his stomach squirming anxiously and his palms growing sticky in sudden heat. He shifted his weight and adjusted his guitar, shrugging a moment too late as a response to Liam. “We should fix that! What do you lot think?”

Hayley’s scream rose loudest above the others’ equally favorable cheers.

“So how about it, Niall?” 

Blushing, he snapped his eyes from Hayley’s expectant face to Liam’s encouraging one. “I’m game,” he said, pulling his mouth into a smile that he hoped was casual and convincing. “Let’s do it.”

They all took that as a cue: Zayn hit the first note, and Liam started up the intro riff, Niall playing a more basic version as back-up. Harry tapped out a soft beat, and Louis picked out a lower harmony. It didn’t sound anything like the studio version: it sounded better, the instruments playing more complex melodies and harmonies, layered in such a way that they still managed to function symbiotically with the singing part. Symbiotically was a word, right? 

Niall decided to forgo the guitar part, because Liam was plenty loud enough on his own for a ballad, and he was trying not to shake as he counted himself in, discreetly clearing his throat and inhaling as he opened his mouth.

“ _ **Her name is July, has the sun in her hair, tanned legs on show, and her shoulders are bare,**_ ” he sang, picking up volume with each line. He was focusing his eyes on a far point in space, using all his concentration to not forget the lyrics or notes. “ ** _Her eyes sparkle, loving me; her smile glows. But we’re just here for summer. We’ll leave here alone._** ”

He let himself blend in with the voices of the other boys as the chorus came around and they sang altogether, “ _ **Love me, July. Love me, July. September’s coming, so love me, July.**_ ”

His eyes flicked over to Hayley for only a brief second before he started the second verse. He didn’t get long enough of a look to see her reaction. “ _ **The ocean’s so cool, but the fever remains from each lingering touch that we share in these days.**_ ” 

Zayn started a high vocal harmony behind him, letting the bass fade out as he dramatically wrapped his hands around the mic in the stand and practically made-out with it. “ _ **The air will get hard to breathe. ‘Where’d summer go?’ We’ll go home to real life, and be all alone.**_ ”

The look on Hayley’s face almost knocked him over, and he stammered over the second line of the chorus, staggered and flustered and half-bowled over by the intense emotion in her expression. Her bright eyes were even brighter than normal, shiny wet with tears that threatened to drip down her modest pink cheeks and roll into her mouth that was forming the words of the chorus right along with him. 

She smiled when she noticed him stumble, and suddenly, he felt okay. Just like that, because how could he be nervous? Anything he did would make her happy, and nothing he did could be wrong. His limbs seemed to melt out of their icy anxiety and he loosened out, allowing himself to move with the music and the latent sentiment in the lyrics. Liam took the bridge as promised, and Niall watched as Hayley sang along. It felt like she was singing the words back to him, and he liked that.

“ _ **One day just a memory, though I wanted more. Wistfully picture you lounged on the shore, with me in your sunglasses, smiling free, ready to give anything to have you back with me.**_ ”

Niall took the lead back from Liam and maintained eye contact with Hayley. “ _ **That won’t be our future,**_ ” he sang, meaning in every word. “ _ **We won’t make that mistake. I swear we’ll stay together once we’ve parted ways.**_ ”

It was Harry’s voice that led the boys into the final chorus, first solo: “ _ **I’ll love you, July, if you love me, July. The summer can’t end if you love me, July.**_ ”

Then as a group: “ _ **Love me, July. Love me, July. September’s coming, so love me July. Love me, July. Love me, July. September’s coming, so love me, July**_.”

Harry let him win the note sustain competition that time. Niall held it until Hayley’s smile stole the last of his breath.

Liam haphazardly threw an arm around Niall’s shoulder as they made their way off the wings of the stage after the second encore, Zayn right behind them, Louis and Harry still getting untangled from their wirework and instrumentation. 

“I really don’t care what management says,” Liam told him, voice slightly too loud as his ears adjusted to the muted quiet of the non-scream-filled hallway. “We’re gonna keep that setlist for the rest of the tour! You sounded brilliant, mate! It’s not right that you don’t get to sing.”

Niall ducked, self-conscious. “Thanks,” he mumbled to Liam. He wasn’t all that embarrassed, really. His adrenaline was spiking hardcore and his heart was still racing. He forgot how much he really did love singing on stage. The thrill was unmatchable. Between the endorphins from the performance and the endorphins from seeing Hayley, Niall felt intoxicated. 

“Nice singing, Niall,” Paul greeted at the greenroom door with a high-five. 

Niall returned the high-five with a grin.

“Could you go make sure Hayley gets backstage?” Liam asked, giving Paul a high-five of his own. 

Paul hesitated. “Are you… I mean… you guys aren’t out, right?” he asked Niall. “You’re trying to keep it a secret, or is it fine if everyone knows?”

Niall bit his lip thoughtfully. He and Hayley hadn’t really talked about whether or not they wanted to hide the relationship. It was sort of assumed that when you date a world famous pop superstar, it would be a secret, right? 

Hayley probably didn’t feel like getting technologically abused by their fanbase. Liam was the only one allowed to be in a relationship, as far as the fans were concerned. When Zayn had briefly dated a fellow singer after their second album, the fans had chased her away with their hate, and any girl who so much as got photographed in the same  _ room _ as Harry would have a timeline of nothing but death threats for a week. Niall knew the few times he had been (inaccurately) romantically linked to someone, the fans had attacked her. 

“Best to keep it a secret,” he said slowly. 

“That’s what I thought. I won’t go get her, then.” Paul unclipped his walkie talkie and hit the com button. “Drew, be on the look-out for a girl about Niall’s height, bobbed blonde hair-”

“She was on the left side of the audience,” Niall offered helpfully. “Fourth row.”

“Fourth row, stage right.”

“Black t-shirt?” Drew’s voice came back. 

“I got her,” Erik interrupted. “Am I bringing her back?”

“Yeah, but not to the greenroom,” Paul was eyeing Zayn as he stomped into the room, managing to simultaneously glare at everyone and no one. “Leave her back by the stage door and I’ll take her from there.”

“Roger that.”

“Zayn, where are Harry and Lou?” Paul asked, returning the walkie talkie to his belt.

“Didn’t see them,” Zayn muttered, helping himself to another bottle of water from the minifridge. 

Paul sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be right back,” he told Niall and Liam. He swept from the room, leaving the door open behind him.

Liam turned to grin at him briefly before scurrying over to the pile of jackets on the ottoman in the corner, rummaging through them for his phone. Zayn glowered at his back, taking brooding swigs from his bottle. Niall coughed uncomfortably, and Zayn whipped his head around to look at Niall for the first time since before the Today Show. 

His expression was surprising: it held none of the hostility that Niall had expected. It was accusatory, but wounded. Niall thought about the way Louis had screamed at Harry that morning, anger only thinly veiling his terror and dread at facing the unknown, at being flung into the swampy uncertainty of life outside of the celebrisphere. Louis’s fear of becoming a “broke nobody” had sounded a lot like the way Zayn looked. He was on the precipice between pleading ‘why would you?’ and ‘how could you?’, but he said nothing, and Niall was grateful, because he didn’t know what he would have said to him if he did.

“Hey, love, it’s me.” Liam’s voice broke their staring contest, both boys returning to their default of staring at their own shoes. “Just got off stage so I thought I might ring you in case you were on lunch. I’ll be up for the next few hours, so call back whenever you get a chance, yeah? Love you. Mwah.”

“What time is it over there?” Niall asked curiously trying to shake Zayn’s angst out of his head. He didn’t have room for any more guilt. Liam hit the end button and tucked the phone back into his coat pocket. 

“What time is it here?” He pulled his phone out again to check and counted on his fingers. “It’ll be a bit past one. I figured.” He slipped the phone in his front jean pocket. 

Liam must have noticed something off in Niall’s expression, because he cocked his head to one side and mouthed,  _ you okay? _ in concern. Niall shook his head, but replied,  _ it’s fine _ . Liam tilted his eyes at Zayn questioningly; Niall merely shook his head again. They could talk later.

Liam cast around for a reason to leave the room, landing on “Let’s go find Paul.” 

Niall followed him out of the room, sparing Zayn one last glance. Zayn picked his head up like he could feel Niall’s eyes on him, but he kept his own on the floor. Niall left and jogged a couple of steps to catch up. 

“What happened?” Liam asked as they walked up the hallway, now cluttered with techies and management and hordes of security and venue crews scrambling in typical post-show bedlam. They ducked around people who were carrying out instruments and dismantled pieces of staging.

“Zayn gave me this…I dunno.” He frowned as he cast around for an adequate way to explain the guilt surge brought on by Zayn’s blended expression of sadness and worry and fear and resentment. Yes, Zayn was angry and short-tempered and malicious, but maybe he was that way in self-defense, self-preservation. Maybe this life was killing him and tormenting him as much as it was the others, but maybe none of them had noticed because Zayn had always been introverted, and had always responded with bitchy, snobby, jerkiness when someone tried to pull him out of it. In the last year, Zayn had really only been an extreme version of his normal self; none of them ever considered the possibility that his behavior was anything other than fame gone to his head. 

The detail that Niall’s mind snagged on was how much Zayn slept. If Zayn didn’t  _ have _ to be awake for a show or an interview or a shoot, he was asleep. Hadn’t he once read somewhere that sleeping all the time was a sign of depression? It made him suddenly protective of Zayn. He didn’t know what to tell Liam.

“Your PHONE is ringing!!! It’s ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing, ANSWER THE PHONE!!! I’M the phone!!! Answer meeeeeeeeeeee! Hey! Hey, guy! Guy! Guy, guy, guy! Pick up the phone!!!” 

Liam slid his phone from his pocket to his ear in a fluid movement, cutting off the custom ringtone Louis had apparently made for him. “Hello, babe! Did you get my message?”

Niall watched in amusement as the little lines on Liam’s face smoothed out, and the muscles relaxed ever-so slightly as he spoke. A smile came to play in dimples on his cheeks. Niall wondered if  _ he _ had looked that happy in the car when he spoke to-

“Niall!”

Niall spun around at the sound of Hayley’s call, and noticed her back down the hallway, walking up towards them, Paul at her side. She lifted one hand from where it was cupped around her mouth and waved him over. 

Grinning, Niall bolted down to her, but in his infinite clumsiness, he tripped on his own feet and ended up barreling into a trio of techies carrying mic stands, knocking all four of them to the ground. He groaned in pain. Bruises. Bruises everywhere.

“Oh my God, Niall!” Hayley was standing above him. She crouched down and watched as he scrambled, mortified, to his knees. “Are you okay?”

She looked more entertained than she did concerned, and his blush deepened. “Er, yeah. Sorry,” he apologized to the techies, who were being lifted back upright by Paul. They grumbled back reluctant acceptances. Hayley pushed herself up to her feet and offered a hand to Niall, who grasped it tightly and yanked her back down, reeling her in for a much needed kiss. 

Their lips barely brushed before Hayley jerked back in shock. “Hey! What… are you nuts?” she spluttered. “There’s… people!”

Niall couldn’t have cared less. Today would go down as one of the most stressful days of his life, and he wanted a kiss, dammit. “And what are they gonna do?” he demanded dismissively, cradling her chin in one hand and pulling her mouth back to his. 

She wriggled her face free. “Tweet about me.”

Niall frowned. She must have noticed something desperate in his expression, because she asked, “Is there a greenroom or something that we can go in?”

The correct answer was  _ yes, but we probably shouldn’t go in there because Zayn is unraveling on the couch,  _ but if Niall didn’t kiss Hayley in the next two minutes, he was going to explode. “Yeah, there’s… here…” he hauled her to her feet and dragged her down the hallway behind him. She released his hand and jogged a couple of steps to catch up, walking shoulder to shoulder with him.

“It’s safer,” she explained to his quizzical expression. It made sense, but he didn’t like it: every nerve ending in the tips of each of his fingers was twitching with wanting to touch her, and his forearms were aching with the memory of the shape of her body embraced tightly within them. He subconsciously shuffled closer to her, and their arms brushed with each step, sending electric currents across his chest that animated his heart like a drum solo on steroids. 

By the time they got to the door, Niall’s mind was a swirling fog of bliss and desire that chased out all other thoughts, like Zayn being in the greenroom and hating his guts and most likely holding Hayley responsible for the band breakup. Meaning he would take to her… less-than-goodly. And that wasn’t even close to a word, but he couldn’t think of any others.

Luckily, the room was unoccupied, only an empty water bottle on Zayn’s seat. 

Hayley walked in ahead of him, and Niall closed the door, turning the lock and intending to turn around and say something seductive (because that’s what people who lock doors do), but when he turned toward her, she glomped onto him so tight he almost couldn’t breathe. But that could have been from how dizzy the smell of her hair was making him and how rapidly his heart was thrumming. 

He hugged back with a python grip, rocking their bodies. She nuzzled her face into his collarbone and kissed up his neck, once, twice, three times, before kissing his lips kittenishly, a soft, tentative  _ I missed you _ in the gentle pressure. He kissed back with an  _ I missed you more _ , but the way he kissed came across as less flirtatious and more solaced than he wanted. 

She pulled away to look at him, hand moving from his hairline down his cheek to rub her thumb against his lips reassuringly. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. All the weight on his chest dispersed like blowing through smoke. Hayley was here and she loved him and that’s all that mattered.

“That bad, huh?”

He sighed out the breath and opened his eyes slowly. She was reading all of it in that clinically empathetic way she did. 

“Worse,” he whispered. He tightened his arms around her waist and brought their hips together. “I missed you,” he said, leaning his forehead to rest on hers.

She smiled feebly. “I missed you, too.” She nudged his lips with hers, looping her arms around his neck. “Look on the bright side, at least they didn’t kill you. And, weirdly, you guys seemed better with each other on stage tonight than you have in a while.”

Niall laughed; he forgot that she didn’t actually know yet. “That  _ is _ weird, because we broke up.”

She scrunched up her face. “Who broke up?”

“I quit the band this morning,” he began, feeling the guilt start creeping back towards him. He held her closer as if she could shield him from it. “And then Harry quit. Li and Lou quit later on, and Zayn just has to deal with it. See, if we all choose to break up, all our assets are protected, and none of us lose what we would have lost if one of us left.” He swallowed and chuckled shakily. “So this tour is it. Then it’s all over.” 

_ Then it’s all over. _ It was the first time words with that much finality on the matter had left his mouth, and the taste they left behind nearly made him retch. 

Hayley looked overwhelmed, face frozen in an unreadable expression. 

“And that was sort of out of nowhere. I probably could have said that better,” he apologized, the guilt reaching around Hayley and digging into him with its rapacious tendrils. Rapacious was a word, right?

She shook her head jerkily. “It’s really not from nowhere,” she assuaged him. “You said that yesterday. I’m just…” she shook her head again, and when she looked back at him, she was sporting a supportive smile, not a single ulterior motive anywhere on her face. “You guys are my favorite band, so it’s a little… staggering. But if it means you’re happy… I care more about you than I do about One Direction.”

She meant it. Niall smiled back in relief. “And just think,” he said, “you’ll never have to put up with what Danielle does. You get to be a girlfriend for the easy part.”

“Um, a world tour is  _ not  _ easy,” she opposed. “I gotta make it through seven months of that before I get to the ‘easy’ part. And even after that, it’s  _ still _ not gonna be easy, because the breakup will be fresh, and I’ll have to deal with the brokenhearted fans and you feeling bad.” She kissed him. “You’re worth it, obviously. But I don’t know what you mean by ‘easy’.”

“I mean eventually, you’ll get a boyfriend who still gets all the perks of being rich and famous without any of the responsibility.” He kissed her back.

“And he’ll spend most of the time in his apartment, watching bad movies and eating whatever food I bring over,” she teased.

“I can’t think of any perks better than those,” he admitted. They grinned at each other and kissed. Niall figured that would be the long kiss that would eventually evolve into them falling onto the couch and making out, but Hayley pulled out.

“So can I count tonight as having a song dedicated to me from onstage?” She panted with a twinkle in her eyes.

Niall felt his own eyes soften. “ _Love me, July_ ,” he sang in a murmur, kissing her neck. She moaned, wrapping her fingers in his hair. “ _Love me, July. September’s coming, so love me, July_ …” 

He sucked beneath her jaw, tongue swiping out to soothe over the spot. Her knees buckled and she wrapped her arms around his neck again to stay up. He snickered, breathless and turned on like crazy. 

“Don’t do that,” she protested in a way that didn’t sound much like a protest at all. 

“Do what?” He feigned innocence. 

“Sing to me and kiss my neck at the same time. It’s not fair.”

“By not fair, you mean-”

“I mean do it when we get back to my apartment.”

He swallowed a whimper. “Deal.”

She leaned in close. “Lips only,” she directed as she crashed their mouths together.

They hadn’t even made it to the fall-on-the-couch part before the knob jiggled violently and there was a BANG! BANG! BANG! on the door. 

Niall growled, pulling his mouth off of Hayley’s reluctantly and shouted, “What?”

“Open the door, Niall,” Paul called back from the other side. 

Niall combed Hayley’s hair with his nails and flicked the lock while she straightened her shirt. The door burst open before he could turn the knob, Louis leaping into the room, Harry hot on his heels. Paul was right behind them, stopping next to Niall. Niall reached for Hayley’s hand and reeled her in against his chest. 

Paul smiled down at them. They smiled in return. Louis made a beeline to the couch and started jumping on it.

“No jumping on the couch!” Paul said wearily as Harry climbed on. “I swear the two of you are impossible today!”

“Hear that, Harry?  _ The two of you _ . Like an old pair of socks.” Lou flung an arm around Harry’s shoulder, looking immensely pleased for the first time in at least a year. Harry beamed. The two of them must have come to some sort of truce, then, Niall realized.

Paul shook his head, but couldn’t seem to bring himself to scold them more. They were in high spirits, acting like best friends again, and the atmosphere of the whole day felt better because of it somehow. Who was he to ruin that? 

Liam came into the room, his phone already stowed back in his pocket.

“How’s Danielle?” Niall asked as casually as he could. He was almost too excited to contain himself: he and Liam were best friends again, and this was the first time in his life that he had a girlfriend and a best friend to introduce to each other. He felt a sort of hopeful anticipation that they would like each other and get along and see what a wonderful person the other was, the same way he had with Danielle. 

Liam smiled perceptively. “She’s good! She forgot her leotard, though, so she had to jog home and get it before rehearsal, which she wasn’t happy about because it’s winter down there, but she said it woke her up. And how,” he shifted his gaze down to Hayley, who tensed almost immediately, starstruck, “is the lovely Hayley this evening?” He swept into an exaggerated bow.

“Haaaaaaaaaayleeeey!” As though just noticing that she was there, Louis bounded off the couch to her. She recoiled slightly, but Niall stood behind her, squeezing her hand encouragingly. Louis, too, swept into a bow even more exaggerated than Liam’s. “Hellooooooooo Hayley! Harold, it’s Haaaaaaaaayleeeeeey!” Louis beckoned him over. “Come see Haaaaayleeey!”

The awareness of a female presence in the room seemed to slip Harry into the charmer persona that he was so famous for, and he sidled over confidently with his signature ghostly smirk. 

“Hey, Hayley,” he said, voice smooth. Niall squeezed Hayley’s hand possessively this time.

“Hi,” she breathed, voice squeaky. 

“So, the famous girlfriend.” Harry offered his hand. Hayley glanced back at Niall like she was asking his permission to touch Harry. Harry didn’t miss it, and he retracted his hand with a laugh. “Don’t worry, babe, I’m not gonna make a move on a taken girl.”

Hayley laughed back. “That’s a relief,” she said, thawing out. “I was wondering how to best turn you down.”

Harry had the tact to mock offense, and everyone laughed warmly.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Liam said genuinely. Hayley laughed at some private joke.

“Ditto,” she said. “Like, a billion times ditto. You don’t even understand.”

“I think we understand a bit,” Liam told her. “I thought you were mute for a minute.”

Louis grew bored of the conversation, and he dragged Harry back to jump on the couch.

“It’s not you,” Liam promised, noticing how her eyes followed them. “It’s them.”

“I wasn’t expecting them to talk to me at all,” she said, snapping back to Liam. “Niall kind of…” She hesitated.

“Told you everything?” Liam offered wryly.

“I was gonna say… yeah. Told me everything.” She blushed, looking like a child caught spying on something. Niall realized he was responsible for that: he put her in the difficult position of knowing more than she should, and any resentment the other boys felt toward her for knowing was his fault. He tightened his grip and pulled her closer for an apologetic kiss on the head. 

“I tell Danielle everything, too,” Liam said by way of reassurance.

“You have Li to thank for the setlist,” Niall digressed.

“Oh, yeah?” Hayley smiled at Liam, who smiled back.

“I don’t know what Niall’s talking about.”

Niall laughed. “You’re a worse liar than I am!”

He put his finger to his lips with a wink. 

“Your car is ready when you are, by the way,” Paul announced to the rest of the room. Not that half the room was listening: they were currently beating the crap out of each other with the couch cushions. Liam flared his nostrils and shook his head, unimpressed. Hayley giggled, and Niall allowed himself a grin. 

“Well, Hayley and I were gonna go back to her apartment,” Niall said. 

Paul nodded on his way out the door. “I figured.” 

“You want to come with us and we can drop you two off on the way to the hotel?” Liam offered.

Niall squirmed, uncomfortable, thoughts flying to anything Zayn might do or say.

“We’re okay. We’ll just walk,” Hayley said knowingly.

Niall laughed at the horrified look of disbelief on Liam’s face. “She means we’ll take a cab.”

“It’s not a long walk,” she objected in a questioning undertone. 

Niall smiled. “To where? The hospital after we get mobbed by fangirls for casually exiting the venue hand-in-hand?”

Hayley laughed to hide her embarrassment. “Ah. Right.”

“You could always ask Paul to drive you,” Liam suggested.

“Paul’s been abused enough today, I think.” Niall’s Paul Guilt Cloud drifted over his face; this day hadn’t just been hard on him or Liam or Harry or Lou or Zayn. Paul had to get the band up and to the plaza well before sunrise, track Niall down, pick him up, console him, break up a fight, find out they were splitting up, escort them to an interview, escort them to a show, oversee stage set-up and sound check, pick up Niall’s girlfriend, keep them under control before and after the show, oversee break down, and get them back to the hotel. All while being plagued by the same job security concerns the rest of them were. He’d arguably had the worst day out of everyone.

Liam seemed to be mulling this over himself. He was quiet for a minute, then wrapped Niall in a tight embrace. Niall seized up in bemusement.

“Li, what-?”

“I’m trying to remind myself not to be mad at you,” Liam said into his ear. Niall jerked away like Liam had slapped him.

“But.” He thought he and Liam were level. He thought Liam understood and things between them were alright. He cocked his head to one side, and furrowed his eyebrows.

“I sort of understand where you’re coming from, and I know this is all for the best, but…” Liam exhaled heavily. “I still don’t like it. And I’m gonna try to not be mad at you, but you can’t always control your emotions, you know? Sometimes you just…feel things.”

Niall didn’t like hearing that. “Li…”

“You and I need to have a serious talk,” was all Liam replied with. 

And Niall agreed with that, so he nodded. “Tomorrow night.”

“On the train?”

“It’s as good a time as any.”

“Don’t you guys have off tomorrow?” Hayley asked.

“I’m gonna be at your place all day,” Niall reminded her. And by “reminded”, he meant tell her for the first time.

She made a face at him, one surely intended to look exasperated, but her reflexive smile didn’t lend the look much credence. “You want me to fail all my classes, don’t you?”

“And get fired from your job.” He grinned. “Our train doesn’t leave until eight tomorrow night.”

Hayley sighed. “You are five kinds of ridiculous.” 

“What?” Niall batted his eyes innocently. “You need to teach me how to make crepes!”

“Does Li want to learn how to make crepes, too?” Hayley looked at Liam with polite expectation. Niall’s mouth pulled down in disappointment: crepes weren’t the only lesson he’d had in mind. 

“No thanks,” Liam declined with equal politeness. “You two should spend as much time together as you can. Tomorrow we go to Canada for a month, and then we start the tour straight off.”

Hayley nodded. “I just didn’t want to seem rude.”

“You didn’t.” Liam smiled. “I’ll go tell Paul to flag down a cab.”

“Already done.” Paul appeared in the doorway for the umpteenth time that night. “We gotta go.” He beckoned to Harry and Louis. “Hey, Larry! The car’s waiting on you guys.”

Harry scrambled to his feet, shoving Louis off him and batting away the cushion Louis was brandishing in his face. “Stop it!” he grunted. Lou cackled and continued to swing the large plushy mass wildly around in the air. “Knock it off, Lou!” Harry snapped. “Louis! Ouch!” Harry dashed behind Paul, who effortlessly slid the cushion from Louis’s slender fingers.

“Aw, Paul!” Louis protested, making a grab for it.

“No!” Paul held the cushion high over his head, which put it out of even Louis’s octopus reach. “Go to the car!”

Louis huffed and followed Harry out. Liam, Niall, Hayley, then Paul came after them, the post-show bedlam of fifteen minutes earlier quieted: the deconstruction crew had dismantled most of the staging, and only a few techies still wandered the linoleum. Paul pushed his way between Niall and Hayley, halting the group. 

“Stand still, count to ten, then walk to the door,” Paul instructed Hayley. “We don’t want anyone outside to assume that you’re with the group.”

Hayley nodded, paying rapt attention. 

“It makes more sense for her to walk out ten seconds  _ before _ us,” Liam said. “That way she doesn’t get stuck behind the fangirl mess we’re going to make.”

“I could tell the cab to wait up the road. You could drive Niall up, let him get out, and come into the cab with me,” Hayley added.

Paul shook his head, frowning. “You know? It’ll be so much easier if we just take him to your apartment, honey.”

“I don’t like cabs,” Hayley said. “If you want to take him, fine, but I’m walking back to my apartment.”

“We’ll get there before you do, and then Niall will be waiting outside all by himself. I don’t like  _ that _ .”

Hayley pulled her humongous purse off of her shoulder and ruffled through it, extracting a key ring. She held it up and pointed to two of them. “This one unlocks the building door,” she explained to Niall, “and this one unlocks the apartment. Got it? Go up, boil some water, and I’ll call you to let me in when I get there.”

Niall accepted the ring with a, “Which keys are they again?”

“These big gold ones.”

“Okay, you’re still gonna leave before us,” Paul said. “Guys! Get back here!” 

Harry and Lou came racing away from the door, back down the hallway to stand with the others. “What?” Harry asked.

“Hayley’s gonna go out before us-”

“Haaaaaaaaaaayyyyleeeey!

“Shut up, Louis!” Niall kissed Hayley neatly on the cheek. “See you soon.”

She kissed back. “Yep.”

“Keep your head down and just walk,” Paul advised. “Act like a crew member who’s just leaving after work.”

Hayley nodded, hitched her bag up once more, and walked quickly down the hallway, opening the doors. A quick snippet of shrieks chased in behind her before the door slipped shut again.

Niall tossed the keys up twice before pocketing them, unable to wipe the smile from his cheeks as he counted Mississippis to ten.


	12. Missing The Train

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Non-consensual drugging at the end of this chapter

“This is the apple pie one,” Niall said as Liam put the fork in his mouth. He made a face and didn’t swallow.

“Did you make that one?” He asked, putting the fork back in the Tupperware container of crepe samples Niall and Hayley had made. 

“Yes.” Niall watched steadily as Liam took another napkin off his lap and spit the gooey mouthful into it. He crumpled it and placed it in the pile at his feet next to the big suitcase he was using as a seat. Niall was standing, opting to use his own suitcase as a table for the Tupperware. “You didn’t like that one either?”

“Yours are doughy,” Liam admitted with a shrug. “They taste too much like flour. They have potential,” he said hurriedly as Niall’s face fell, “and Hayley’s are delicious. A few more days of cooking with her and yours will be just as good, I’m sure.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right.” He looked down the stairs at Penn Station below, travelers striding about purposefully, like little cycloning remnants of a recently-shaken snow globe. Not a single one of them looked up at the members of One Direction casually relaxing on the stairs. Barely any of them looked up from the floor. Niall decided he liked Penn Station. It was refreshing, this ubiquitous anonymity. Ubiquitous was a word, right?

“What’s this one?” Liam held up the fork.

Niall inspected it. “That’s actually some funnel cake. We made that too. The white part is powdered sugar.”

Liam popped it in. “Mmm!” He sounded pleasantly surprised. 

Niall grinned. “That stuff was my favorite.”

“It’s fantastic!” he exulted with his mouth full. He swallowed only after all the flavor had been sucked out of it. “Is there more?” He poked around the remaining pastries in the plastic.

“It was only that little bit.”

“Damn.”

“I’m actually kinda thirsty.” Niall leaned over and peered between the railings. “You want another smoothie?”

“Definitely!” Liam got up. “We should probably go find Paul and Drew and Erik anyway. We told them we’d be right back.”

“When was that?” Niall took out his phone to check the time.

“A little after six?”

7:31. Oops. “Let’s go find them,” he agreed. “Smoothie later.”

Paul, Louis, Harry, and Erik were around the other side of the Amtrak waiting room, lounging amongst a cityscape model of luggage. Niall and Liam parked their suitcases against the others.

“Right back my ass,” Paul grunted, watching them. 

“We stopped for smoothies,” Niall explained lamely.

“It takes two hours for smoothies?” Harry asked skeptically, opening his eyes to look up at Niall. He was laying on the floor, head in Louis’s lap, while Louis, sitting upright and leaning against the suitcases, was stroking his hair lazily, eyes closed, half-asleep. “What’d you walk to Brooklyn for them?”

“It was DIY smoothie shop,” Louis mumbled sarcastically, barely coherent in his melatonin haze. “They had to grow and harvest their own produce first.”

“That still would’ve taken less time,” Harry said.

“Habble lib luh,” Louis answered.

Harry smiled sweetly, looking content and genuinely untroubled for the first time in ages. He closed his eyes and shifted to find a comfortable spot. Louis yelped, eyes flying open, hands shoving Harry off. Harry scrambled up, disheveled and bewildered.

“Fuck, Harry!” He wheezed, cupping his crotch. “I need that!”

Harry, Liam, Niall, and Erik laughed. Paul just shook his head. 

Drew and Zayn approached. “Anyone else for the bathroom?” Drew asked. 

Harry grinned in Louis’s direction. “I can’t use my penis,” he grunted, glaring back at Harry.

“Um.” Drew lifted an eyebrow. “Okay. Anyone else?”

Harry got to his feet. “I’ll go.”

“I’ll go too. I hate the bathrooms on those trains. Are you coming, Niall?” Liam asked.

Niall was distracted: Zayn had gotten on his knees and was leaning in to whisper in Louis’s ear. While that was strange in and of itself – Zayn was furious with all of them, and hated Louis when he was in a  _ good _ mood – it was the expression on Louis’s face that was curious. It was one of focus, uncharacteristically serious as he paid rapt, undivided attention, considering whatever it was that Zayn was telling him carefully. He pulled back and turned his head slightly, muttering something too fast to read his lips. Zayn nodded and leaned in again.

“Niall,” Liam barked. 

Niall startled. Drew, Liam, and Harry were staring at him curiously, waiting for an answer. Paul and Erik were leaned over an iPhone, discussing travel details. It seemed that he was the only one to notice Zayn and Louis’s bizarre exchange. He gave them another glance, but they were already separated, Louis lounging on the ground like he was trying to fall asleep again, and Zayn slumped moodily against a suitcase on the opposite end of the pile, as though nothing had transpired between them. He looked back at Liam.

“Erm… no, I’m alright.” His nosiness wouldn’t let him leave until something happened. He didn’t have to go to the bathroom anyway.

Drew and the boys were barely gone for a minute before Louis opened and shut one sneaky eye. Zayn had his phone out, scrolling through it and not reacting to Louis. Niall looked between Louis and Paul, who had his back turned to him. Paul leaned in to point something out on Erik’s phone, and Louis leaped to his feet, stomping when he landed to get Paul and Erik’s attention. The second their eyes landed on him, Louis let out one of his crazy laughs and took off. 

Paul threw a questioning look at Niall, who shrugged honestly, before shouting, “Louis!” and chasing after him.

Zayn was still posed nonchalantly with his phone, but his thumbs had stilled and his eyes were in soft focus, watching his periphery even though they were on the screen. Niall looked around, waiting for more. Sure enough, two minutes later, Louis’s rabble-rousing form came speeding around the waiting area, running past them with high-pitched squeals of trouble. Erik spun around, noticing him a minute too late, arms clamping through the air uselessly. Paul ran by after him. 

“Run on the other side and bookend him!” Paul shouted at Erik. “It’s a big circle!”

Erik looked back at Zayn and Niall, torn because Paul was telling him to leave them alone. After a minute of deliberating, he seemed to decide they would be fine. “I’ll be right back,” he said, taking off in the opposite direction of Paul and Louis. 

A sudden panic gripped Niall when he turned to see Zayn’s reaction to Erik leaving and he realized it was just the two of them alone again. Zayn yesterday didn’t try to beat him up, but today was a new day, and maybe Zayn had moved past the morose fear and onto retributory bloodlust. Zayn kept his eyes on the circular waiting area in the middle and refused to meet his gaze. 

Louis burst through the entrance on the Amtrak side, appearing to have cut through it when he noticed that Erik wasn’t going to let him go around it. He ran towards Niall and Zayn, breathing heavily, running faster than before now that there was an actual chase happening. Zayn simply pointed towards the ladies room.

“Take the hallway on the other side and run down the stairs,” he instructed. Louis gave a thumbs up and slowed for a minute to allow Paul and Erik to see him as they shoved their way out of the Amtrak waiting room, apologizing as they elbowed through schools of bystanders. 

“There he is!”

Louis flailed his arms wildly above his head, whooping as he took off again.

“Where’s he going?” Erik asked desperately.

“Down to the platforms!” Paul wheezed. “Come on!”

“That’s not the platforms,” Niall muttered, suddenly concerned. “Is it?”

“No, there’s more waiting space down there.” Zayn still wouldn’t look at him. He stowed his phone in his pocket and stretched his arms out in front of him, flexing his fingers and yawning widely. Without another word, Zayn loped away undaunted. 

Niall watched his back as it disappeared around the waiting area, and wondered if he should follow him, and if undaunted was really a word. He jumped when his phone buzzed against his butt. He wrestled it out of his pocket, nearly dropping it- the big, flappy pockets were really starting to get on his nerves. 

“Hello?” he answered, making a mental note to buy new shorts. 

“Are you guys still at Penn?” Hayley asked.

Niall frowned. “Where are you?”

“Work.”

“I thought your break wasn’t until eight.”

“We were dead. They let me leave early.”

Niall humphed. “That would have been nicer to know before the shift started.”

Hayley laughed. “I had to go,” she reminded him. “I need the money.” 

“I offered to pay you,” Niall reminded her with a cheeky grin in his voice.

“Uh huh. Like a prostitute.” She sounded just as unamused as she had looked with her lips pressed together and nostrils flared that afternoon when he had offered (only half-joking) to pay her twice as much as her job did for a shift of hanging out with him. It bubbled a laugh out of him. 

“Oh shut up,” she chided. “Are you guys still there?”

“Yeah,” Niall looked at the big board of arrivals and departures. The clock said 7:39, and their train was the third one from the top and marked “On Time”. “But the train’s gonna be here any minute, and then we’re boarding.” He looked around, not a bandmate or bodyguard in sight, and frowned. “I think.”

Hayley laughed again, and Niall was struck with just how much he loved her laugh. She laughed as much as he did, as freely and as wholly as he did, and there was something so gratifying about hearing the sound as a result of his actions. He smiled widely. 

“You never know anything,” she teased.

“I actually have an excuse this time!” he justified. “Louis ran away.”

“He what?” She sounded alarmed.

“Just in the train station,” he assured her. “I think there’s a conspiracy. Zayn whispered something to him when Drew and Li and Harry went to the bathroom, and then when they all left, Louis got up and just  _ whoosh! _ ” his hand went sailing through the air in demonstration, even though Hayley couldn’t see. “He ran away and got Paul and Erik to chase him. And then Zayn just left.”

“Where’d  _ he _ go?” she asked. 

“I dunno. He went around the glass waiting room, and I lost sight of him.”

“That’s…” she cast around for a word and landed on, “worrying.”

“Worrying?” 

“The idea of any of you working together is worrying,” she joked, “but if Lou and Zayn have somehow agreed to work with each other, it’s even more worrying. They can’t stand each other right now, right?”

“Oh, not at all,” he agreed. “I think he just needed Lou to get Erik and Paul out of his way.”

“Right,” Hayley granted. “But for what?”

“I have no idea.” If he was being honest, he didn’t  _ want  _ to know, because it must have been something serious if _ Zayn _ was seeking out  _ Louis _ for help. And he had a feeling that, with everything happening right now, any serious thing that Zayn was involved in wouldn’t be positive for Niall. He shook out the ideas of unpleasantness before they made his stomach churn any harder. “Are you on your way home?”

“Well, I was gonna come to the train and say bye, but if you’re about to leave…”

“There’s really no point,” he said, mouth pulling down on one side. “We’ll be gone before you get here.”

“I know.” She sighed. “It’s probably better off, since I have so much  _ homework to do _ .”

He cleared his throat innocently.

“You know, I was thinking about that yesterday,” she continued, tone losing its accusation. “I’m graduating early. So I’ll be done with school right around the same time as you get done with the tour.”

“Oh, cool! So when do you graduate?”

“I finish a couple of weeks before Christmas.”

Niall smiled. “So am I meeting your family for Christmas, or are we taking a graduation vacation?”

“Graduation vacation,” she repeated with a giggle. “Your accent is freaking adorable.”

He blushed. He hated his accent so much, and even though she was pointing it out as a good thing, she was still making him hyper-aware of it. “Which one?” he steered.

Hayley was quiet for a minute. “Should we be planning that far ahead?”

She sounded tentative, like she didn’t want to be asking the question. He frowned, thinking of what Liam had said at the radio station. “Look. I have every intention of still being with you at Christmas time. So yeah, we should be planning that far ahead.” 

“It’s just that this all happened so quick,” she murmured after a pause, and in classic Niall fashion, volcanic guilt erupted from nowhere, steeping him with the ludicrous allegation that he clearly sucked at showing her how he felt, otherwise she wouldn’t be doubting their longevity.

“Think of it like this,” Niall said. “I haven’t had a girlfriend since… ever. And you’ve had a crush on me for years. You’re the first person I’ve ever met that I felt such an active desire to be with.”

“But not really, right? I’m a rebound girl.” She sounded guarded, but almost blasé. “Anyone could have walked into that sandwich shop.”

“But anyone didn’t. You did.”

Niall hated pauses over the phone even more than pauses in real life, because he couldn’t see the reaction of a person over the phone the way he could face to face. Not that he could read people face to face anyway, but at least seeing them physically present precluded the possibility of them walking out on the conversation when they decided he was being too big of a dickhead to handle. 

“I did.” She cleared her throat. “So what’s the first stop in Canada?”

“Hell,” he told her.

“Montreal?” she guessed.

He laughed. “I love how you assume _ that’s _ Hell!”

“Have you ever been to Montreal?” she demanded. “And that’s really all I know of Canada anyway. I know Quebec, Ontario, and Montreal.”

“Remind me to send you one of those postcards with a map of the country,” he teased.

“It won’t help,” she insisted seriously.

“Hey, Niall.” There was a tap on his shoulder, and he spun around to see Harry standing behind him.

“Hang on,” he told Hayley. “What’s up, Harry?”

“Lou just called me,” he said, sounding as confused by Louis’s hijinks as Niall was. “He said Zayn met some guy in the bathroom who said his sister was outside and wanted a picture with us, but our security wouldn’t let her.”

“ _ Our _ security?” That was weird. Paul and Drew and Erik usually helped the fans bypass protocol to meet them.

“Yeah, I guess,” Harry nodded. “That’s what Louis said. But I’m getting the story third-hand, so who knows. He said the guy told Zayn that his sister was in the alley outside upstairs by Madison Square Garden, and they drove all the way from Mansfield, and they’ve been waiting for hours to meet us. So Zayn promised we would.”

So that was the reason for getting rid of Paul and Drew: Zayn needed them gone so he could sneak outside and meet the fan. But clandestine fan meetings weren’t something Zayn would do. Zayn had never been the kind to do anything with fans, even at official meet and greets. He didn’t like to talk to them or even look at them much. 

“Is this gonna be how he copes with all this?” Niall speculated out loud.

“You mean become suddenly social?” Harry lifted an eyebrow. “I dunno, but that’s a scary thought. This brother must have really begged, or something.”

“How far away is Mansfield?” he asked thoughtfully.

Harry shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

Niall pulled his hand away from the receiver. “Hey, Hayley?”

“Hm?”

“Where’s Mansfield?”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Er, should I be?”

“It’s where you guys are playing the opening show of the tour,” she explained slowly, sounding like she wanted to laugh and facepalm. “Maybe I should get  _ you _ a map postcard!”

“It won’t help me either,” he joked. “It’s near Boston,” he told Harry. “That’s where the Comcast Center is.”

“How far is that from here?” Harry queried.

“Three or four hours,” Hayley answered, hearing him through the phone. 

“Three or four hours,” he repeated to Harry.

Harry made a face of concession. “I guess that’s worth a picture or two.”

“What’s worth a picture or two?” Hayley demanded. “What’s happening?”

“Apparently Zayn was using Louis to get rid of security so we could go outside and meet some fan from Mansfield,” Niall relayed to Hayley, looking at Harry to verify.

Harry nodded. “That sums it up.”

“Well, go do that, then, before Paul comes back,” she said. 

“Can I call you back in an hour or so?” he asked. “Once we’re all settled on the train.”

“I’m free all night,” she told him. 

“I’ll tuck you in before Liam and I talk,” he promised with a kiss into the phone. “I miss you.”

She kissed back. “I miss you too.”

“Talk to you later.”

“Absolutely.”

He hit ‘end’ and slipped his phone back into his pocket, looking at Harry in expectation. Harry was chewing his nail, looking like he was concentrating. 

Niall took a half step forward, prompting, “So…?”

He looked uncertain. “Lou said take the staircase on the other side of the waiting room.”

So Niall’s staircase. He’d never taken the door at the top, so he didn’t know what was on the other side, but considering all the pedestrians coming through, it probably did lead to the street and Madison Square Garden. He nodded. “I know where that is. Come on.” 

Walking at Harry’s pace could be maddening, because Harry had long but slow strides, and Niall could never match his pace because he could never figure it out. It looked like he was walking slowly, but he covered more distance, and in the end, he really walked at Niall’s default pace. But Niall’s eyes tricked him, and he tripped on his own feet multiple times due to his misperception. 

“Where’s Liam and Drew?” Niall asked, remembering that’s who Harry had been with last, and now he was on his own.

“Liam took Drew to get a smoothie,” Harry said. “Lou told me to come get you and bring you out, and I couldn’t exactly do that with a security guard. Liam said once they all get back, he’ll volunteer to retrieve us and meet us outside.”

They took the escalator up, meeting Louis at the top of the staircase. 

“It’s about time,” he huffed. “I’ve only been waiting here all bloody day.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”

“Please what?” Louis’s eyes were alight with double entendre. 

“Lou,” Harry warned.

Louis put both hands up in surrender as they walked out the door. “Sorry. Old habit.”

“Uh huh.”

The door slid shut behind them, and the alley was dark and eerily quiet. It had a chill that was unnatural for June, and gave a claustrophobic tint to the air because it was closed in at the top and felt a lot like being in a parking garage or an underpass. Niall’s neck hair stood on end, and he was filled with even more dread than usual.

“Let’s make this brief so we can get back inside.” Harry voiced Niall’s thoughts exactly. “It’s creepy out here.”

“Where’s Zayn?” Louis wondered, squinting around in the darkness.

“Louis?” an unfamiliar female voice called out. “Is that you?”

Harry knit his eyebrows together. “Where is she?” he muttered.

Louis shrugged and called out, “Yeah, it’s me! Where are you, love?”

“Over here!”

They followed the voice behind a wall, where a shivering young girl was standing with her purse. She was tall and chubby, wearing shorts that were far too short and a tanktop several sizes too small. She had straight, dishwater blonde hair, but bright, emerald green eyes above a long nose and a small mouth. It opened to reveal glossy white teeth when she spied the three of them. 

“Niall and Harry, too!” she squealed. “Omigod,  _ hi _ !” She clapped her hands together and bounced on the balls of her feet.

Niall smiled involuntarily. It was always cool to see how excited their fans became just at the sight of them, even if a lot of the time, it was embarrassing. 

“Hello, love,” Louis said with a wink. Harry leaned down and placed a kiss on her cheek and a one armed hug around her shoulders with his signature smirk. She wrapped both arms around his neck and clung for dear life. Harry chuckled when he made to pull away and lifted her slightly off the ground with him. She withdrew sharply. 

“Sorry,” she blushed breathlessly. 

Harry waved her off. “It’s all good, darling.”

“Natalie,” she offered, holding out her hand like she wanted Harry to shake it.

Harry grasped it between both of his. “Nice to meet you, Natalie.”

She stared, dumbstruck, down at Harry’s hands, blush scribbled across her cheekbones, eyes shiny. 

“Don’t I get a hug?” Louis asked in a falsely petulant voice. Natalie jerked away from Harry like Louis had zapped her with a cattle prod. 

“Of course you do!” she laughed, throwing her arms around his neck. “And I can’t forget about Niall.”

Niall’s hug barely lasted a second, but he was used to it. Natalie hadn’t even made eye contact with him yet.

“Where’s Liam?” She asked, pulling away from Niall to look at Harry.

“He’s keeping security distracted,” Harry explained, throwing another look around the space. “Did Zayn make it out here yet?”

“Yeah, he did,” she nodded. “But he went with Tessa to get the camera.”

Harry frowned. “Is… Tessa your brother?”

Natalie giggled, and Louis hit his shoulder. “You knob. Tessa’s a girl’s name.”

“Well, I didn’t know there was another girl,” he exclaimed with an almost apologetic look at Natalie. 

“Tessa’s my best friend,” Natalie explained. “Her brother brought us both down to meet you guys.”

“Her brother’s very nice,” Niall said, thinking of all the fangirls whose families didn’t like getting involved in their obsession, “if he drove you two all the way here just to maybe meet us.”

She shifted, almost uncomfortably. “He had to come down and break up with his girlfriend anyway. We just came along for the ride.”

“And you didn’t bring the camera?”

Niall looked at Harry sideways, brow furrowed at the way he was asking the question. It didn’t show in his face, but he had something suspicious crawling at the edges of his voice.

“I…we- we had her phone for pictures, but it died,” she said, sounding suddenly flustered. “We’ve been out here all day, so we were playing on it and stuff… We have a professional photography camera with HD quality in the car, so she was gonna go get it, but Zayn said he didn’t want her going by herself in the dark.”

Louis seemed to accept this, even though it wasn’t dark yet and, as horrible as it was, Zayn didn’t care enough to walk a fan somewhere to keep her safe. That was a Liam thing to do. Niall wondered again if this was how Zayn was going to cope with the break-up: to seem like the good guy, set himself up as the fan advocate in favor of keeping the band together. Maybe he was going to go for a solo career, and he was planning to take all their fans with him…

Or maybe he was going to cope with this the way Harry and Louis coped with emotional trauma: by realizing that their fans were female, with female things to offer. That would explain why Natalie looked so discomfited. Niall vaguely wondered how old Tessa was, for Zayn’ sake. Hayley was a junior in college; from the look of it, he doubted Natalie was even a junior in high school. 

“I’m sure they’ll be back soon,” Louis assured Natalie, slinging his arm around her shoulders. “And if not, they’ll hold the train for us. They’ve done it before.”

Natalie was super squirmy, seemingly unable to stay still, and it was starting to make Niall uneasy, though he didn’t understand why. He felt bad for her, because he knew how it felt to be the friend left behind while the other messes around with attractive people. 

“Yeah,” she agreed, flatly noncommittal.

“Tessa’s brother said our security wouldn’t let you guys come see us?” Harry pressed. 

“Um, no.” She cleared her throat under Harry’s scrutinizing, sapphire gaze. “We asked but… he said… you know, that you guys weren’t in the mood for fans today.”

Niall winced. With everything going on, it was true that none of them were really in the mood to deal with fangirls right now, but there had been plenty of times before that they weren’t in the mood, and that had never stopped Paul and Drew and Erik from forcing desperate, dripping, shaking fangirls on them. 

Usually, it was done with the express intention of pulling them out of whatever intolerable foulness they were spewing out on everyone else. The only thing that would have stopped them from bringing fans was a concern for their emotional well-being, a fear that one of them (most likely Zayn) would snap and do to the girls what Niall had done to Hayley when they first met. Niall had spent the day with Hayley, so he didn’t really know how his band mates were getting on with the breakup today. It must not be real well. 

Louis must have been thinking the same thing, because the grimace on his face was tinged with guilt. Harry, however, only looked more suspicious. “Which one of them told you that?”

“Which one of what?”

“Which of our body guards told you we weren’t in the mood?” 

“Harry,” Niall rebuked softly, not liking how aggressive he suddenly sounded. Maybe this was going to be Harry’s snapping moment. Niall shifted closer to him, ready to put himself between Harry and Natalie if he had to.

Natalie glanced at him, but Harry kept his eyes on her. “The big one. The really…” she trailed off, using her hands to describe thick shoulders and tallness. 

“Paul?” Niall offered. He frowned when she nodded in relief, thinking it sort of strange that she was a big enough fan to drive four hours to meet them, but not to know Paul’s name.  _ Everyone _ knew Paul’s name. He mentally scolded himself for turning this around on her, because that’s what Harry was doing and it wasn’t remotely fair. They couldn’t be angry at her for making them feel guilty. 

“Yeah, it was Paul,” she said. Harry narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to reply, but she went, “Oh!” and crouched down to dig through her bag, as though just remembering something. Harry shared a look with Niall, but Niall just looked at him with as much  _ Knock it off and be nice _ in his eyes as he could. “I almost forgot! We made you guys a treat last night.”

She extracted a Ziploc bag with about a dozen huge cookies inside and stood up, struggling with shaking fingers to open it. The faint smell of chocolate and peanut butter wafted out. She held it open in front of her so the boys could take one. 

“We made them from scratch,” she explained when the boys hesitated. “And they’re vegan, so Liam can have one, too.”

Louis’s hand froze halfway towards the bag. “Vegan?” He puckered his face.

“No, no, they’re good,” she inveigled. That was a word, right? “Just try one bite, you’ll like it.”

Louis still looked unconvinced, but Natalie had a puppy dog face, and Louis was such a sucker for girls making puppy dog faces. He pulled one out and brought it to his lips, taking the tiniest of bites, Harry’s tiny objection of “Lou!” not even registering. He let the flakes melt on his tongue, thoughtful expression on his face as he analyzed the flavor. 

“Mmm,” he finally decided, a smile of pleasant surprise growing on his lips. “I like it!”

That was enough for Niall. He took one out and bit down, the cookie bending submissively to his mouth, coating his tongue in gooey perfection. 

“Harry?” Natalie offered him the bag. He was inspecting Louis and Niall apprehensively. She shook the bag gently to get his attention, and he turned to her, still hesitant. “Aren’t you gonna take yours?”

Harry was immune to puppy dog faces and hopeful tones and pleading eyes after years of gratuitous exposure to them, so he stared unblinkingly at Natalie, taking her in. She squirmed again.

“Harry, you gotta try this, it’s fantastic!” Louis insisted, mouth full. Niall nodded in agreement, starting to feel embarrassed by how open Harry was being with his distaste of this poor girl. Harry was never like this. 

Louis reached into the bag for more, and he pulled out two, handing one off to Harry, who took it gingerly, nibbling just a cautious bite. Seeming to ascertain that it was indeed edible, he ate the rest in two bites and helped himself to another. Natalie beamed.

“This is the most delicious vegan food I’ve ever eaten,” Niall told her as he took a second cookie himself. She seemed tense, anticipatory, and it reminded Niall of how Hayley looked waiting for his feedback on her crepes. 

Unlike Hayley, Natalie didn’t relax upon hearing his positive feedback. He frowned, but kept eating. 

“If Li doesn’t hurry up, there’s not going to be any left,” Louis threatened around his third cookie. Harry snuffled in agreement. 

“There’ll be plenty left,” she said, spinning her head around to look over her shoulder. Her breathy voice was almost inaudible. She turned her face back to look at them, and said something else, but Niall didn’t hear a word of it. 

“Say that again?” he asked. Or at least, he tried, but as soon as he tried to speak, the muscles in his mouth unhinged, and his jaw dropped, the pieces of soggy cookie spilling out of it. Mortified, he tried to close his mouth and apologize, but his mouth wouldn’t close. 

The Hell…?

His heartbeat picked up in panic, and he lifted a hand to close his mouth manually, but even though his hand was cupping his chin, he couldn’t feel the sensation. It was like someone had numbed his face. He squeezed experimentally, reaching up his other hand to knead and prod all over, but he couldn’t feel anything. What was going on? His fingertips started to tingle and lose feeling. 

He flicked his head over to Harry and Louis, ready to somehow convey to them that he needed help, but the movement made his head spin and he fell to his knees, throwing his hands down to catch himself. He knew it must have scuffed his palms, but he didn’t feel any pain. His knees, on the other hand… he tried to cry out when they collided hard with the asphalt, but he couldn’t pull enough air into his lungs. 

He realized then that his speeding pulse was something other than nerves. He lifted his head, wondering why Harry and Louis hadn’t run over to help him. Surely they could figure out that he needed help?

His vision was being speckled black even as he tried, like some B horror movie about killer gnats, but even through the imaginary swarm, he could make out Louis, sprawled out unconscious on the street only a few feet away. 

Harry was still above him, swaying on his feet before he too folded to the ground, hands scrabbling in the air for purchase. The movement would have been funny, if this wasn’t happening in real life and totally terrifying. He fell to the ground without the pitstop on his knees like Niall, and his head bounced off the asphalt and his eyes dropped closed. 

Niall found himself moving and Natalie’s face dropped into view, too close to focus. She was saying something, but the rushing in his ears was too thick to fit any other sounds in. One of her hands was lifting his arms off the ground, and the other was pushing between his shoulder blades. She wanted him to lay down, probably so he wouldn’t smash his head like Harry when his muscles finally gave out. 

Niall tried to jerk away from her, but for all the responsiveness his body was giving, he may as well have been trying to control another person’s body with telekinesis. And he was not telekinetic.

It occurred to him, belatedly, that Zayn probably hadn’t gone with Tessa of his own volition. 

But he was gone before he had time to wonder if volition was a real word.


	13. Missing In Action

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hayley's POV. The boy are only mentioned in this chapter.

Hayley really didn’t think much of it when Niall didn’t call Friday night. 

She figured he and Liam were talking everything over and sorting out all of their problems, and Hayley didn’t want to get in the way of something so important. Even though he promised to call before they started talking, he might have just gotten caught up in the conversation, and by the time they got done, he probably thought it was too late to call her. 

She didn’t really connect that it had been Friday until her alarm went off Saturday morning, and when she turned on the TV to watch her morning sitcoms while she got ready, there were cartoons on instead. She laughed at herself and dragged her blankets and pillows to the couch, checking her phone on the commercial break. No texts or missed calls. 

Again, she didn’t think anything of it. It was seven in the morning on a Saturday, and the guys had been travelling all night, and were probably still asleep. Maybe even still on the train. She Googled the train schedule while talking animals with bad attitudes blew each other up.

She called her best friend Lauren while she experimented with some pancake recipes, because she and Lauren always played weekly catch-up on Saturdays. Lauren went to school in Boston, and every other weekend, they met up in Providence to shop and have dinner. On the home weekends, they called during brunch. Hayley listened to Lauren’s usual kvetching over how no one in extracurricular groups could possibly get any work done because there was always  _ some _ noisy event going on in the student center next door every night.

“Just because  _ they _ don’t care about homework doesn’t mean they shouldn’t think about the rest of us,” she complained. Hayley heard this speech so often that she could recite it word for word. She tried not to laugh as she listened to Lauren. “Like, how am I supposed to get work done when they’re blasting Salsa music? And who the Hell holds a salsa dance on a  _ Wednesday? _ ”

“Salsa club?” Hayley guessed, whisking the batter.

“I don’t need your sarcasm,” Lauren huffed good-naturedly. 

“I’m just answering questions,” Hayley told her. “Student habit, you know?”

“It was a rhetorical question and you know it.”

“I know nothing of the sort.” Hayley lifted the whisk and watched the batter drip down into the bowl, mesmerized. She put the bowl on the counter and attempted to write her name with the dripping batter. “But aside from that, your week was fine?”

Lauren snorted. “If you can call two socioeconomic pop quizzes fine. Two socioeconomic pop quizzes, mind you, which I couldn’t study for because of  _ salsa music _ .”

Hayley rolled her eyes and dipped a finger in the batter, tasting it. It needed more sugar.

“So what about your week?” Lauren inquired. 

Surprisingly, Hayley hesitated. “You know,” she hedged, confusing herself with her secrecy. “Monday was boring, Tuesday was boring…” she trailed off, the only sound being the scrape of the whisk on the plastic bottom of the bowl. 

“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?” Lauren prompted without expectation.

_ Wednesday I fell in love with my celebrity crush in real life, Thursday he became my boyfriend and I went to a Z100 secret show for our favorite band, and Friday we spent the whole day cooking and talking and kissing. _ “Boring, boring, boring,” she lied instead. 

“We need more excitement in our lives,” Lauren lamented for the millionth time. 

“I’m working on a new recipe,” Hayley offered, trying to distract herself from the churning in her gut. 

She and Lauren had been best friends since they were seven. They literally told each other everything the minute it happened, a big deal or not big deal. How could she keep a new boyfriend from Lauren? Especially when the new boyfriend was freaking Niall Horan from freaking One Direction? 

She and Lauren had been following One Direction since X-Factor; Hayley could still remember forcing Lauren to come over just to watch the episodes with she and Coretta, the Scottish exchange student, knowing she would love them. Countless album releases and concerts and merch later, they were still just as in fangirl love with 1D as that first night under the blankets in Hayley’s room six years ago. 

“It’s a baked good, isn’t it?” Lauren asked, unimpressed. 

“Waffles,” Hayley defended. 

“Close enough.”

“Oh, shut up. I wrote a great soup recipe in class on Tuesday.”

“Sounds enthralling.”

“And which test did you fail on Tuesday?”

“I’m hanging up on you.”

Hayley laughed. “Okay.” She looked at the clock. It was almost ten. “I have to call someone anyway.”

“Alright. Good luck with the waffles.”

“Good luck with the…not doing homework.”

“There’s another dance tonight,” Lauren informed her darkly. 

“Why don’t you try actually going to one of these dances?” Hayley suggested. “It would be something new and exciting.”

“Meh,” Lauren croaked noncommittally. “I have homework to pretend to do.”

Hayley laughed. “You’re impossible.”

“Your face is impossible.”

“Your mom is impossible.”

“That hurt.”

“Talk to you soon, kid.”

“A’ight. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“Bye.”

The waffles didn’t work out. Hayley dumped the batter and just cubed up some melon to dip in yogurt, scrolling through Twitter.  Absolutely nothing was happening online. This was to be expected on a Saturday morning, because everyone was lazy and sluggish and half asleep. Even the European accounts Hayley followed were irritatingly inanimate, and it was almost dinner time over there. 

She glanced at the top of her phone, where the clock glowed 12:02 in the right-hand corner. Montreal was an hour behind New York City, and their train had gotten in at 3:11. So they were probably at the hotel by 4. That was seven hours of sleep. He had gotten nine on Thursday night with her, so he should be rested enough. She smiled at the thought of waking him up with some sweet sentiment, because that was usually the boyfriend’s job. 

She thumbed the recent calls icon and pressed on Niall’s picture.

She cleared her throat and rehearsed her opening line in her head –  _ Morning, sleeping beauty _ – while the phone rang in her ear. It rang three times before the phone clicked to signal a pick up.

“Where is he?”

Hayley’s brow furrowed, taken aback by the gruff, weary, unfamiliar voice on the other end. “Hello?”

“Hello, Hayley,” the voice said peevishly.

“Oh, Paul!” She laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice.”

“Uh huh.” Hayley tried to decipher his tone, because it wasn’t friendly, and it was aimed at her. “So where is he?”

Irritated. Like a toothache. No, like someone in line at the post office. He wasn’t angry, just impatient.

“Where’s who?” she asked, because she genuinely had no idea who he was talking about.

“Niall.” He said it as she realized it. “Where did they go?”

Her breathing hitched. “ _ They? _ ”

Paul sighed. “Look, we have things to do. Are they at your apartment?”

They. The band. Hayley laughed. “Yeah actually,” she told him facetiously. “Zayn and I are braiding each other’s hair.”

“Hayley.”

“What would they be doing here? Here is not Montreal.”

Paul was quiet, and it worried her. When he spoke again, there was an undercurrent of anxiety in his voice. “You don’t know where they are? Honestly?”

Hayley felt fear grapple its way up the back of her throat. “Why would I call Niall’s phone if I knew he didn’t have it?” 

Paul didn’t answer.

“Paul, what’s going on? Where are you guys?”

“ _ I’m _ in New York, still. Drew and Erik and I.”

Her pulse kicked up. “What happened to Canada?”

She could almost hear him shrug. “They’ll show up,” he said, answering a question that no one asked. “This is probably just a prank.”

“Are they missing?” she demanded.

“I don’t know where they are,” he allowed. “They’re probably just messing with us.”

“Do they usually mess like this?” Hayley asked, already knowing the answer.

“No,” Paul answered after a moment of silence. “But they usually don’t do a lot of things.”

She got the implied  _ you’re one of those things _ and swallowed. “Did you call them?”

“What do you think, sweetheart?” He exhaled. “I’m not worried. They’ll show up,” he repeated. Hayley wondered how many times he’d told himself that, and how many more times it would take before he believed it. She was worried- Niall wouldn’t have just left without telling her.

Would he?

They hadn’t been together long enough to establish what he would or wouldn’t do when it came to her. Maybe she was a nice little three day tryst while he was in town, and now he was gone, so he saw she was calling and gave Paul the phone for him to lie to her. To shake her off and end it. She started to doubt their relationship for the millionth time since they’d gotten together, and that was saying something, since they didn’t even know each other three days ago…

Niall wasn’t like that, though. She may not know much, but she knew the way he looked at her, always worried that she was going to leave him. He wouldn’t leave her. People can’t fake looks like that. Niall would not have suddenly run off without telling her he was okay and he would be back. Just like that, she knew he would have tucked her in last night no matter what, because he promised he would. 

Last night. Her blood ran cold. When did they go missing? How long ago?

“Paul,” she began in a strangled voice, but he shut her down.

“Don’t you worry, either. I’m sure it’s just a prank.”

She doubted it. Liam didn’t prank. Especially one like this. This was beyond a prank. It was cruel to worry so many people sick like this. 

“I’ll let you know if anything happens,” Paul promised hollowly. 

“Anything like what?” she snapped, unable to stop herself. She was starting to understand what Niall’s frustration with Liam was: the deluded denial was really obnoxious.

He was quiet again. Hayley thought about her words and swallowed again. If the boys really  _ were _ missing, they probably didn’t want to think about the possibilities of what could happen. She opened her mouth to apologize, feeling nauseated, but Paul said, “Like anything. Goodbye Hayley.”

“Goodbye,” she said when she cleared the horrors from her head long enough to remember how to talk. But she was saluting a dial tone. 

She collapsed onto the couch and tried to breathe normally, a cold ache of dread spreading up from her toes.


	14. The Basement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: The boys are forcibly restrained in this chapter.

“Oh,  _ fuck me _ .”

Niall was jerked back to lucidity by Harry’s wounded moan, adding his own wordless one. His limbs were too heavy to move, his eyelids had been glued together, and  _ holy shit _ his head was  _ slamming  _ against his skull. 

Okay, so maybe it was a loose definition of ‘lucid’. He felt disconnected: his awareness was fuzzy and he felt like he might throw up.

A girly voice giggled, and another one said, “That sounds like a proposition to me.”

Niall tried to suck in a breath, but he gagged on something wet and chunky, like a warm smoothie that was only half blended and had been mixed with too much syrup– 

Oh dear god, he  _ was _ throwing up. He got feeling back in his stomach and felt the muscles contracting painfully as he choked on his own vomit, throat and nose burning. It wouldn’t stop coming out, even as he drowned in it, and tears flowed down his face because he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure of what was happening, but everything hurt.

Something slammed hard against his back. Then again. And again. 

“Do something!” a high-pitched voice cried out in horror. “He’s gonna die!”

_ Thank you, melodramatic voice. _ His already elevated alarm spiked, and he coughed harder. The object – it must have been a fist, he figured – hit his back again, once, twice, hard enough to leave a bruise. It must have helped, though, because he got what he was choking on up and out and found himself breathing, too heavy but still well enough to sob like a baby. 

_ What.  _

_ The.  _

_ Fuck. _

He couldn’t think straight. Parts of his body were coming back to him one by one. He would have enough time to register just how much it hurt before the next one would turn back on and flood his nerves with currents of electric agony. His mind was too occupied to think anything other than  _ ow  _ and a few choice swear words. 

There were sounds flitting around in the fringe of his attention, mostly moaning and groaning and the same swears that were in his head. 

But there were also the sounds of shuffling feet and creaking wood and girlish whispers. Niall considered listening to them a little harder so he could make out what they were saying, but he decided it was more important to figure out what way was right-side up. Between the puking and crying and whatever else was going on, his inner ears were of absolutely no use to him.

It wasn’t until he heard Liam’s grunted, “ _Ohhh,_ ” that he tried opening his eyes. For some reason, he wasn’t expecting to hear Liam.

Because Liam wasn’t with them outside. Liam wasn’t with them outside at Penn Station with Natalie. So how did Liam get here?

Where was here?

Niall opened his eyes slowly at first; very slowly. They dragged up millimeter by millimeter like they were marching to war, and even open, Niall couldn’t actually see anything other than dark, blurry blobs. Some of them were moving, some of them were still. He blinked a few times and tried lifting his hands to rub at his eyes. They wouldn’t move.

His watery gaze fell to his left wrist. It was wrapped in something white. They both were, a quick inspection of the other side revealed. He squeezed his eyes shut again, blinking rapidly and trying to force focus. 

“Am I…? What’s going on?” Liam’s voice went up an octave. “Where are we? Why are we–” 

“Tied up,” Niall stated blithely as he stared down at the ropes, his tongue too big and voice hoarse. He tugged his arms up, testing how well they were tied. It hurt. The rope was coarse and thick and tight. He pulled harder against it, and the movement made him aware of his legs, which were also tied up. 

He seized his whole body with all the strength he could muster, but it made no difference, and he nearly rocked the chair he was in sideways. “Tied up.” 

He stuck his tongue out of his mouth, trying to get a better look at it. It was pink, but he couldn’t tell if it was actually swollen or not. “Tied up,” he said with his tongue out. It sort of tickled and he kind of liked the way it felt, so he did it again. “Tied up, tied up, tied up, tied-”

“Shut the  _ fuck up _ !” Zayn growled familiarly. Niall searched the dark space for him, spying him in the corner on his left, just now coming to. His eyes were squeezed shut, mouth set in a grimace of pain. It was an expression he wore when he woke with a hangover, and Niall wondered if Zayn realized something else was happening yet.  _ He _ didn’t even know what was happening yet. “Christ alive,” Zayn moaned. “My head. Fuck me.”

The same girl as before giggled again. Niall whipped his head around the room, but he couldn’t see her. He saw Liam in the seat on his immediate right. Liam’s wide eyes were roving around like his, trying to find the girls they could hear, but couldn’t see. Harry was in the seat just past Liam, yanking against his restraints like Niall had, but judging by the grunts coming from him, he was putting more force into it. 

Louis was in the very last seat, and Niall was surprised to see that he was awake, because he hadn’t heard Louis make a sound yet, and a silent Louis was worthy of alerting Guinness  _ and _ Ripley’s. But there he sat, eyes sad and only partially lidded, staring in wary despondency at something only his angle let him see. He was still and slumped and his drained apathy scared Niall more than anything else, because that simply wasn’t Louis.

“Everyone’s awake,” he said flatly. It took Niall a minute before he realized Louis was talking to the girls. 

“We have ears,” said a voice that definitely didn’t belong to a girl. 

“Then let us go!” Zayn roared out in frustration, rocking on his chair so its legs clattered against the ground loudly. 

A small girl moved out of the shadows in the corner at the far end of the room. Stairs. They were in a basement. That’s why there was a sharp chill running like humid little fingers down his neck. There was the creaking of steps before another girl moved out to join her, and an impatient, “Just _ go _ ,” when something shoved them forward and two men stepped down behind them. The four walked closer, and Niall could see them better in the dim penumbra of the clichéd single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. 

One was Natalie, which he had expected. 

The other girl – the gangly, too-skinny foil of Natalie with cheaply dyed blue hair and corpse-grey eyes – must be Tessa then. The similarly skeletal brunette boy was definitely her brother, if their identical gaunt cheeks and rounded chins and upturned noses were any clue. 

Niall couldn’t even begin to guess who the other muscular brunette boy was, his thin, overgrown hair spilling into his almost black eyes. They held none of Tessa and her brother’s sociopathic coldness, but they also didn’t have any of Natalie’s mossy concern. They were bright and excited and almost proud.  _ Look, _ they bragged delightedly,  _ I kidnapped a pop band. _

There was a tense moment of silence while the parties examined each other. Niall caught Natalie hit Tessa’s thigh with one hand like an excited flipper. Fangirl’s often did this discreet motion when they met One Direction, like they needed some verification that the band wasn’t a mirage in front of them, some figment of their overly suggestive, fantasy prone imaginations. 

But under the circumstances, it was unsettling to see. Did Natalie see this whole ordeal as nothing more than a meet and greet? Did it somehow slip her mind how she  _ drugged them  _ and tied them all to chairs in a basement?

“Where are we?” 

Eight pairs of eyes zeroed in on him, and Niall was surprised at himself for speaking.

“Our house,” Tessa said. “In our basement. We haven’t used it since it flooded out a couple of years ago. I’m Tessa, by the way.”

Harry exhaled shortly, and it might have been a laugh. “I figured.”

“He gave  _ me _ a hug,” Natalie gloated in an undertone, unable to keep the smile off her face at the memory of hugging Harry. Tessa shot her a poisonous glare briefly, before she scrolled her predatory eyes up and down Harry. 

“I’ll get a hug,” she said, and it sounded like something between a threat and a promise.

“Can I get a hug, too?” The brown-eyed boy asked with mock eagerness. Natalie glowered at him. 

“Don’t be a jerk, Elliot!” she snapped. 

But Elliot kept up the stupid expression of excitement and fanned his face with both hands like he was about to swoon. “I’m sorry if I’m excited, okay, but I just can’t, okay, One Direction is _right there_ , like right in front of us, okay, I can’t even, Nick, my ovaries are just…” He turned to Tessa’s brother, who didn’t have to do anything more than look at him to shut him up.

“Why are we here?” Harry’s voice was acerbic and impatient, not a drop of fear in it. He sounded belligerent and defensive, the way Zayn normally did, and nothing at all like himself. 

Nick bored into him with his underworld eyes, but Harry stared back unwaveringly.

“I don’t need another reason to want to beat the shit out of you, Styles,” he said. His voice was higher than Niall had imagined, but just as cold. 

Tessa whipped her head around to look at her brother, and there was emotion on her face for the first time. 

“What did I say, Nick?” she demanded. “No one touches them. That goes double for you, Elephant.” Her eyes flickered to Elliot, who pursed his lips to hide his smirk. 

“ _ He _ hates them,” Elliot said, pointing towards Nick with his thumb. “I was just along for the ride.”

“Since when have you needed a reason to fight someone?” Natalie hissed, not even attempting to cover her loathing towards Elliot. Elliot let himself smirk at her, waggling his eyebrows up and down in allowance. 

“You’re here as punishment,” Tessa explained, turning to the boys with the soullessness back on her face. “When you were in Boston in January, we waited. For hours.  _ Out _ in the  _ cold _ at the radio station. We just wanted a picture with you guys, and we thought we had it in the bag, cuz we were the only ones waiting when you came out.” Her voice melted from monotony to a snarl as she spoke.

“And you walked right past us.” Natalie’s voice quivered, eyes pinching in the corners, like she had cried a lot over this memory, and it still made her cry. “We were yelling and calling and you didn’t even look at us.”

There had only been one radio interview in Boston back in January. That interview was one of a million awful ones of the year, and Niall didn’t remember anyone waiting outside. He just remembered Paul and Drew breaking up two Louis/Zayn fistfights and them missing a flight and consequently a sound check for some live finale of a dancing show in Los Angeles, and being rushed out of the studio and speeding to the airport, barely skidding into their seats on the flight before it took off, and making it to the show with just enough time for wardrobe. 

“That wasn’t a good day for us,” Liam mumbled after a minute. There was almost as much hurt in his eyes as there was in Natalie’s, and the two were eyelocked, Liam visibly swelling with guilt the longer they stayed connected. “I mean, I’m not… trying to make excuses. I just… you should… understand that we aren’t like that. And we’re so sorry. If we noticed you… we would have stopped…”

Liam was leaning forward in his seat, and Niall knew how much he wanted to hug Natalie. If Niall was easy to guilt, it was nothing compared with Liam. Before the band, Liam had been kind of a dumb jock, but a bighearted one at that. Niall suspected most of Liam’s fan appeal came from his notorious empathy. 

“Right,” Tessa said sourly, sounding like she wasn’t even close to buying it. “The point is we were disappointed. We haven’t loved you the same way since,” Tessa sent an almost imperceptible glare to silence Natalie, who squirmed and stared at her feet like this wasn’t altogether true for her, “and we lost a lot of respect for you. So we’re gonna hold you until after the opening show of the tour. So you can disappoint all of the fans like you disappointed us, and change the way they see you forever.”

“But we’re not gonna do anything besides that,” Natalie assured them in a rush. “We just…” she looked at Elliot and Tessa and Nick uncertainly, “ _ I _ just…wanna talk to you guys. And be friends. We’ll bring you food and play games and maybe bring down a laptop so we can watch some DVDs or something.” She smiled shyly. Niall stared at her in disbelief.

“Do you know how much promotion we’re doing this month?” Zayn demanded. “We’re doing promo in Canada and Australia and Mexico before the tour starts. You really want to break all of those fans’ hearts, too? The way you felt when we didn’t stop for you, you wish that on strangers? Girls like you? You want them to rip up our posters in heartbreak and cry themselves to sleep every night and not be able to focus because they’re so depressed-”

“Zayn, stop it!” Liam yelled, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“Why?” he yelled back. “They need to think about what they’re doing to thousands of fans!”

“Well,  _ I _ don’t!”

Zayn's mouth snapped shut and he shook his head, staring at Tessa who looked unfazed by his monologue.

“ _ We’re _ not doing it to them,” she told him, unrepentant. “You are. Just think about that between games of Monopoly and romantic comedies with Sally Stockholm Syndrome.” She jerked her head in Natalie’s direction. 

Natalie blushed, a frown on her chubby little face.

“I believe our work here is done,” Nick said. He lifted an eyebrow at Tessa, who nodded.

“Thanks again,” she replied. 

“Anytime.” He and Elliot stomped up the stairs. 

Natalie and Tessa shared a look before turning back to the band. “So we ordered a couple of pizzas for you guys,” Natalie told them. “Li, we don’t have a vegan pizza, but we have some salad I can bring down for you.”

“Can we at least get untied to eat?” Harry demanded.

Natalie bit her bottom lip, eyes jumping to the slivered window in the corner. It was the typical, horizontal basement window, nowhere near big enough for any of them to crawl out of. 

“Nope,” Tessa answered for Natalie, who evidently was taking too long. “We’ll feed you.”

“Great,” Harry snapped. Tessa glared at him.

“Keep that up, Harry, and I’ll spit on it,” she warned. 

Harry glared back, but didn’t press his luck. 

“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” Natalie said, pulling on Tessa’s shirt to break her staring contest with Harry. “We have your favorite drinks, too. We’ll bring them down.” 

They dashed up the stairs, and the boys could hear a thick door crash closed behind them.

Niall expelled a sigh he didn’t know he was holding and slumped down, wishing he could cradle his head in his hands. 

This was ridiculous. They were being held hostage by a couple of crazy fan girls who weren’t even crazy enough to do anything more than torture-by-Parcheesi. Now that they knew the girl’s intentions, Niall was more annoyed than anything else. A month of simple-minded distractions in their company would be maddening.

But the more he thought about it, the more it started to sound almost like a vacation. Yes, it would be boring enough to drive him up a tree, but it was going to be a month of no interviews, no concerts, no schedules. And he was sure if they asked Natalie for specific games and movies, she would probably oblige. 

True, the majority of them weren’t on speaking terms with each other, but since when did you need to talk to someone to watch a movie? He wasn’t deluded enough to think a month in a basement would make them all friends again – honestly, it would probably have the opposite effect – but it shouldn’t be too hard to ignore each other. 

“Bloody brilliant work, Zayn,” Louis spoke eventually. He was leaning his head against the back of the chair in a way that didn’t seem good for his neck, staring at the ceiling.

“Shut the fuck up, Louis,” Zayn ground out behind clenched teeth. Niall wondered what they were going to do if they couldn’t hit each other. 

“Bloody brilliant work and shut up to the both of you,” Harry spat. He was back to tugging against his ropes. “Zayn had the idea, but Lou executed it.”

“And you went along with it,” Niall pointed out. Harry’s hands were anything but clean on this one. Niall never would have left the station if not for Harry, and he wasn’t gonna sit by while Harry went on a holier-than-thou trip.

“Yeah, I remember, Niall, thanks,” Harry said sarcastically.

“This is nobody’s fault,” Liam put in, ever the Buddha voice of reason. “Any of us could have said no, but we didn’t. We’re equally responsible for this-”

“Li, for  _ once _ in your  _ life _ , could you just  _ stop _ ?” Louis groaned. “Let me blame Zayn and move on with my life, please.”

“Which life are you moving on with?” Zayn demanded. “The one where you’re stuck in a basement for a month? Yeah, that sounds like forward motion.”

Louis gasped. “Such big words! Zayn is learning!”

“I swear to  _ god _ -”

“You can swear to whoever you’d like,” interrupted Harry, “but we’re the only ones listening.”

There was something implicitly morbid about that statement, and they all fell quiet again. 

Louis laughed shortly. “You know,” he began, “the ironic part is we’ve been world superstars for almost six years, and this shit doesn’t happen until the day after we decide to break up.”

Niall gave his own little humorless laugh, but it was drowned out by a loud gasp. The boys all jerked their heads up in surprise.

Natalie was standing at the foot of the stairs, plates of pizza on the floor at her feet, hands still out in front of her like she had dropped them. Her eyes were wide, staring between all of the boys in frantic disbelief. 

“You… what?” she sputtered. 

“What?” Louis copied. But he knew. They all did. She'd heard everything. Niall braced for the cataclysm.

“Tess- Tessa! TESSA!” Natalie shrieked.

Tessa came barreling down the steps, slamming the door at the top. “Natalie, the basement isn’t sound proof unless the door is  _ closed _ !” she barked. “You can’t just scream or my parents are gonna come down here! What the Hell is wrong with you!” 

Natalie pointed at Louis, looking unfazed by Tessa’s reproach. “H-he- he- he- he said that they- he- he-”

Tessa looked curiously at Louis, who had on his best poker face. “What did you say?”

Louis shrugged. It was kind of funny, wasn’t it, how they could tell management that they were breaking their contract, but they couldn’t tell a couple of fans who kidnapped them that they were breaking up their group. 

Tessa’s jaw clenched, and she turned back to Natalie. “What did he say?”

“He said they’re breaking up!” she whimpered. 

Tessa’s expression turned peculiar as it fell and tightened simultaneously, pulling up and down like a yoyo before settling somewhere in between. “Who’s breaking up?” She probably meant to sound intimidating, but her voice trembled. A lot.

Natalie’s arm flailed as she kept pointing to the group at large. “Them! The… the band!”

Tessa’s eyes flashed fire at Louis. “No one’s breaking up,” she commanded, her voice firm again. 

“We are,” Harry said, attempting to draw her heat from Louis onto himself. It worked. But Harry was fireproof. 

“No, you’re not,” she snarled. 

“Yes, we are,” he snarled back.

“Tessa,” Natalie sobbed. She sniffled and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Do something.”

“Nothing you can do will change our minds,” Harry vowed. 

Tessa just stared, looking lost, like someone had pulled the earth out from beneath her. 

Niall flashed back to the look on Hayley’s face when he told her after the secret show that they all quit the band. Every single one of their fangirls was going to make that face. Niall didn’t want to think about it, because that was the worst expression he ever had to see someone make. It did awful things to his stomach, and even worse things to his chest. Even Harry seemed to deflate slightly under the look.

“No,” Tessa whispered simply. Her face transformed into one of calculation, which made Niall feel even more uneasy, and with a final look at each boy, she took Natalie by the arm and ascended the stairs. 

The slamming of the door twisted Niall’s stomach into knots.

“I do  _ not _ have a good feeling about this,” Liam muttered.

“No shit?” Louis inquired. 


End file.
